When You Make Holy the Verb, You Emily by Selma Martin

 

Photo by Wendy Maeda/The Boston Globe via the Poetry Foundation 

When You Make Holy the Verb,

You Emily

I will strip back everything as I loaf here

let the rest be absorbed like osmosis
with inner eye, I will Emily the backdrop
document till the effort is grounding

Free from forged manacles to adhere
to, will inhale deep every color I notice
focus how they penetrate my scent top
until the very tip of my head is exploding

I will Emily and avoid all entanglements
of metaphors and the foolish need to focus
on their strength to take me over the top
—the last doom of folly in speechifying

I will strip back everything as I loaf here
I will inhale deep every color I notice
focus on their strength to take me over the top
focus on Emily—who scarcely deigned to lie
—and aim to overtake creases without sermonizing

©️ Selma Martin

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Selma Martin

Selma Martin is a retired English teacher with 20 years of experience teaching ESL to children. She believes in people’s goodness and in finding balance in simple living. She lives in Japan with her husband of 35 years. In 2018, Selma participated in a networking course that culminated in a final lesson to publish a story on Amazon. She completed the course and self-published her short story, "Wanted: Husband/Handyman," in 2019. Later, collaborating with peers from that course, she published "Wanted: Husband/Handyman" in "Once Upon A Story: A Short Fiction Anthology." Selma has published stories on Medium for many years, in MasticadoresUSA, The Poetorium at Starlight, Short Fiction Break, Lit eZine, and Spillwords. In July 2023, she published her debut poetry collection, In the Shadow of Rainbows (Experiments in Fiction). You can find Selma as selmawrites on Instagram and Twitter, and on her website, selmamartin.com.

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