MARY KASIMOR has most recently been published in Big Bridge, Arsenic Lobster, Nerve Lantern, Posit, 3 AM, Touch the Donkey, Yew Journal, Otoliths, and The Missing Slate. Her two latest books are The Landfill Dancers (BlazeVox Books 2014) and Saint Pink (Moria Books 2015).

MARIE-THERESE TAYLOR was a librarian in Edinburgh, Fife and the North East of Scotland. She now lives in Glasgow. Her poems and short stories have appeared in Coastword’s Hotel , Glasgow Women’s Library’s Mixing the Colours, Federation of Writers Scotland’s Soundwaves, and online in Snare’s Nest and Nutshells and Nuggets, and are forthcoming in The Fat Damsel, Three Drops from A Cauldron and The Open Mouse.

disappearing into a divine mental illness

with     disappearing bruises so     detailed that no shadows fall
onto hallucinations or    tattooed dates    no part of you a piece of self
no discovery in the lighthouse    stars    no one offering to save you
from the trees    of attachment no family patterns    no processions
of blood lines no one    entering the outside of a personality    disorder
no mental illness    no    separation from    yourself no songs from
predecessors
of self
no songs of youth
no songs of
birds
no past    time for divine    hang overs nor    divine loathing   no
stopping on the    road to rescue    interference    no one    believing
that    you will end human    sacrifice no songs of loss    no loss of
politics no politics    nor polite policies    no selves determining self
no broken physics    no shame
no bite sized
messages
no red meat
no
tea spoons of speed no    lessening of hunger and you are melting into
sunlight on a    dark highway disappearing into    a movie    among
your more remote    selves find matches    without lighting your hand
and no one calling
you the
final
person
like a dinosaur

 
beyond dogma while i was starving

defeat begins in the uterus
afraid of ourselves before we were born
with our dogma here lies sin tasting itself
the sun was in the corner
we watched ourselves in 3-d in the next field
we unnamed wild flowers beside the wild daisies
we saw ourselves as stick figures lacking a mind
and intestines playing by the railroad track
playing find our bodies
with a four year old’s fear of sins and incense
that moment in music in bells and prayers
i wanted to locate myself in this corner part of the avenue
and the river was over there with a vague gesture
the mississippi river doesn’t know that i am alive
yet i hold it in my dreams at 2:00 am
when i want to leave
and place never ends beyond life
when i crossed the bridge you waved to me
i left the other place and the map was a way out
even when i returned it felt good
the weather was cold we froze in our house
i loved the cold
i loved life’s poverty
i convinced myself that starving was free
i had no money to count and each morning was brutal
i had no right to eat poverty
i spoke in the many circles about extreme existence
no one said in what direction to arrive
where i found my name stored in the files
when i never really succeeded
but i was free to be vivid in many ways

Mary Kasimor

Hold him

Bald as a coot    my infant son
his occiput
just bigger than
a barn owl’s egg
irresistible
to my cupping hand

His gums unbroken break    a smile
I have to mirror    fondly
echo his glossolaliac garbage
knowing that language
is never just words

So
why is it that
grandpa’s hairless dome
moves me first to pity him?
       thank God
       it will be years to come
       before I dribble like that
I scribble birthday wishes on his card
hoping he will put in his teeth
before he thanks me
and asks to go home

How come
I hesitate
before I wrap my palm
around the trembling knot of his
bewildered fist?

Marie-Therese Taylor

All works published by the Glasgow Review of Books are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License and the journal reserves the right to be named as place of first publication in any citation. Copyright remains with the poet. http://www.glasgowreviewofbooks.com