by Margo Taft Stever

My body opens
like a telescope
from bed, always
groping for
blood, for oxygen,
for stars, for
points of light,

for little idio-
syncrasies of light.
Sphere, cylindrical,
press near
my ear, my tongue,
move sinews—
snap, slap,

the skein of skin.
Hawks, dogs,
everything runs
the other way,
the end-stopped rain-
drops, little tablets,
their curved

bellies slap and flop.
Below, the ship
enters—boat,
prow, and bier.
The hill is my bed
and I lie down, seasick—
suddenly, a woman.


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Margo Taft Stever’s collections include Cracked Piano (CavanKerry Press, 2019); Ghost Moose (Kattywompus Press, 2019); The Lunatic Ball (2015); The Hudson Line (2012); Frozen Spring (2002) and Reading the Night Sky (1996). Her poems have appeared in Poem-A-Day, poets.org, Verse Daily, Plume, Prairie Schooner, Connecticut Review, upstreet, and Salamander. She is founder of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and founding and current co-editor of Slapering Hol Press. She lives in Sleepy Hollow, New York (www.margotaftstever.com).