Hannah Marshall

Joy

Which lives in the throat.
Which, silenced, becomes a plum or a firework.
Which bugles oxygen into every synapse.
Which brings forth daffodils.
Which, when confronted with a German catechism, dreams of negative space.
Which paints a hole into a well.
Which carves the thornbush into a ladder for beetles.
Which, laughing, counts stars.
Which maps lovers in soft folds, in cries like paring knives.
Which is green as avocado.
Which tastes like spice drops.
Which swings high enough to touch its toes to the maple leaves.
Which, when dead, is only sleeping,
Which rises on the third day.
Which lilies.
Which moons.
Which drinks wine.
Which thinks your sweater is lush as marigolds.
Which can steep rain like chamomile tea.
Which forgives, even itself.
Which, standing on a street corner, is all Walk Signals.
Which sizzles like morels in butter.
Which holds the iris like a new religion.

Hannah Marshall’s poems have appeared in New Ohio Review, The Madison Review, Anglican Theological Review, Chiron Review, and others. She lives in south-central Illinois, where she works as advising editor for Greenville University’s literary journal, The Scriblerus, and as a poetry editor for Converse College’s South 85.

 :

… return to Issue 12.3 Table of Contents.