Green
By Mary Ann Mayer
Green, I slept with boys
needing an even wilder green,
believing my breath should merge with theirs,
and that’s what’s done,
after sex, to sleep.
So I’d lie there still,
listening to them breathe,
easy,
next to my hesitant quiver—
But our rhythms never matched,
so I held my breath to let them breathe.
Transfixed, I’d watch them
sleep like babies,
and lie awake, intent
to other sounds,
the moth at the screen,
the 4 am breeze,
Ssssh…the sound of
no sound,
and I, there,
the listening.
About the Poet
Mary Ann Mayer’s most recent poetry collection is the illustrated Kissing the Shuttle – A Lyric History (Blackstone River Books 2018), re-enacting the rise of textile mills, KIng Cotton, and the tuberculosis epidemic. She has received GrubStreet’s “Blue Period” Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, among other awards. Her work has appeared widely, most recently in the Paterson Literary Review, the Ocean State Poets and Peterborough Poetry Project anthologies, and the 2020 Wickford Art Association’s Poetry & Art exhibit and anthology. She lives in Sharon, MA and Franconia, NH.
About the Artist
Gabi Casella is an Art Education Major in the class of 2023 at Montserrat. She dabbles in a variety of mediums from digital to sculpture and drawing. Gabi is also a large fan of occult, cryptids, bugs and other oddities in the world.