Molly Brodak
Molly Brodak is a poet, and the author of three books of poetry. She received a BA in English at Oakland University then an MFA in Creative Writing at West Virginia University. The winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, she teaches at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Mild Peril
I might find a blueblack sky when I'm ready
to feel all the moments, not just the sleazy important ones.
To uncoil the wild little everything
inside this now, which I am crouching to fit into.
Three forty seven a.m. in the dooryard.
Providence. Resolve. Alcohol.
I am afraid of my dreams.
Maybe a mourning dove wheezes out of a hedge,
lungs throbbed by its own wings
(they build
bad nests
eggs often
slip out)
Stupid and faithful. I left fondness up to you.
And now, we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.
I asked what is going to happen and he said it's happening.
Lock Nest Monster
Outside, the sound of branches in wind,
a woman's voice
like the chopping of apples.
The house is icy.
The good question is always a how.
The walls are impossible.
A freak perfection in a woman baffles,
consumes, then she is just a mother,
with enough sense to cut away
a still-lovely dead foot.
How can I care so little
for myself now?
Then she is a soggy wool muffler
I have nowhere to hang.
At once, timelessness.
As recognizable as the sea.
A photo of us on the shore,
her in a thin coat and smiling.
The Living Daylights
You could say The Entombment, 1501
is unfinished,
and explain away John the Baptist's big breasts
and weird fluorescent orange robe.
You could lose the good grey in that kind of afternoon.
At the foot of Christ, the frowning girl checks her cell phone.
If background doesn't matter-looks all around like vague hills, then why
is Jesus marble-pale, except for his pink penis exactly at the center of everyone; why should
the bare wound in the plane be for Mary. Michelangelo hoped for ultramarine from Afghanistan
to baffle that gap. But he never tried black, nor dotted pillbugs in nooks.
God likes a nook. See how pain moves. From one chest to arms, wrists, then start again
at the next man. Mary's void could also hold a little battle, or dead star-
always meanwhile, John looks at ugly olive Mary Magdalene, figuring her body
up under it all.
Said So
O I heard you.
I meant to make a coat for smoke. They flock to poke a floating coat.
How hope halves: I planned to fake a plan to halt.
I had to hate my hand to rot. But brains bash,
and cope without a seventh thought
and caught without a slot to talk, no words grew.