Sandra Marchetti

AUTUMN DAMASK

Come.
Let me show you
the blown open roses
of nearly November.


Geese land in a card deck shuffle.
Their fingers sweep the ground
then plait down the body.

Lay fetal on the ground.
In the Midwest you will see
the world split—
a lidded eye drawn open as if
by marionette leads.

The willows are four crowns pointing down.

Comfort is when
you are tethered
to a place
you couldn't move
fast from anyway.

Roam the ground where you are
mapped, flat and free, beneath
this sky, this new sea.

Sandra Marchetti was named the winner of the Midwest Writing Center's 2011 Mississippi Valley Chapbook Contest for her volume, The Canopy. She was also a quarterfinalist for Able Muse's 2012 Book Award and a finalist in Gulf Coast's 2011 Poetry Prize. Sandy's poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Ohio State's The Journal, Phoebe, Nashville Review, Stone Highway Review, Subtropics, Gargoyle, and Thrush Poetry Journal, among others. She was an artist's fellow at Vermont Studio Center this summer and you can find her at sandrapoetry.net.