What is this thing I must sing to?
I stand up, sit
Down, then
Stand again.
My mind a fan blade pivoting
In patches in sunlight
And wind,
Scent of peony.
I wait for the bird half
Of my body
To reveal itself,
That sliver of food I carry
In my heart to feed the dead.
As if their leaving
Might finally mean something.
As if that bluebird
Coming down
Out of the pine
Might finally stall
At the feeder’s edge.
One cloud inlaid on the river
Like polished marble.
Light fraying to fading
Horse-shapes
Between the trees.
If one eye must quit its listening
And release its silver,
Then that wren is still there
On the lawn
Lashed down by ropes
And strings of wind,
Quietly feeding.
On the way out when I walked
To some arbitrary vantage,
A spot in the yard;
On the way back
(When I leaned down
And touched a poppy)
To the same.
Wet and tufted, unwounded.
I have taken for granted too long
The tongue’s relationship
To the lip,
So long
A saint might be teased
Out of it.
A mirror carried from darkness.
Then tremble, then seed.
Then then.
Time leaping forward just
For the thrill of it.
Logic like crystallized gypsum.
We sit: the morning and I.
Consciousness: our sleeve of honey.
Glass heart, glass eye, glass
Tongue, glass spine.
I can’t tell—
Of Buddha’s two deaths—
Which to prefer—
The one with poison
And a rush of blood
Or the one tamed
With willingness and grace.
Daylight sharpens
Its immaculate knife.
How does a bird know
It’s been lifted?
How know we have cheated sweetness
(And/or death)
Out of muscle and burning spoke?
M.P. Carver is a poet and visual artist from Salem, MA. She is Director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, miCrO-Founder of Molecule: a tiny lit mag, and teaches at Salem State University. Her work has been published in Rattle, Mantis, and Nixes Mate, among others. She has received funding or fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Essex Community Foundation, the T.S. Eliot Foundation, and Disquiet International. In 2022 her poem “You & God & I” was awarded the New England Poetry Club’s E.E. Cummings Prize. Her chapbook, Selachipmorpha, was published by Incessant Pipe in 2015, and a chapbook with Lily Poetry Review Books, Hard Up, is available now.
More at mpcarver.com.
Ọna Anosike is a writer, editor, and literary leader whose work sits at the intersection of storytelling, community building, and educational design. She is a published writer and the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the TONIC, a literary journal dedicated to amplifying bold, original storytelling from underrepresented voices. Under her leadership, the TONIC has grown into a curated space for emerging and established writers alike. She has served as a writing instructor, both at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and was chosen as a judge for the 2025 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Prize for Undergraduate Literary Magazines.
Her editorial and mentorship work is grounded in a decade of experience as an educational consultant and program specialist, designing inclusive learning systems for schools and nonprofits nationwide. She is currently completing a literary short story collection and a young adult novel, with early agent interest. She holds an M.S.Ed. in Education Entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania, an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, and a B.A. in English from Northeastern University. She is also the founder of Inkwell Montessori, an authentic Montessori school opening in Somerville, Massachusetts, in September 2026.
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