Natalie Marino

Two Poems

Sky in September

But suicides have a special language.

—Anne Sexton’s “Wanting to Die”

When I wanted

to die

I climbed bridges—

the Golden Gate,

the Sunshine Skyway,

the Bayonne Bridge.

High

above dark water,

the film of my body

landing

on its steel surface

played on repeat.

When I wanted

to die

I was as lost

as an April road.

I languished

in my longness

and asked

the bright blue

morning air

to fill my lungs,

to awaken

something in me.

Now I remember

spring like an old sky

in September

looking down

on the still

green grass

and baby orchids

shining gold

in sunlight.

Sexual Nostalgia in Peri-Menopause

In the early hours

when the dragonflies

are in a frenzy again

tapping at the window

like rain and I cannot

sleep I go to the wheat

and the flowers,

to a field of rust and gold,

to hell, to holiness,

to the pleasure of nakedness

on wild grass,

to the pleasure of the past,

to you.

In the early hours

among the flowers the sun

also rises above the blush

of a fading star.

Natalie Marino is a poet and physician. Her work appears in Atlas and Alice, Gigantic Sequins, Isele Magazine, Pleiades, Peatsmoke Journal, Rust + Moth, The Shore, and elsewhere. Her micro-chapbook, Attachment Theory, was published by Ghost City Press in 2021. She lives in California. Find her on Twitter at @nataliegmarino and online at nataliemarino.com.