I started writing poetry in 2014. Since then, I’ve been published in Blackbird, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle, The Delmarva Review, Summerset Review, MUSE/A Journal, and Blue River Review. My poems have won the Pat Nielsen Poetry Prize twice (2015, 2017), and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Twilight at Lewes, Delaware
Blackbird, Fall 2018
Civil Twilight
When the blue heron
is onyx etched
upon blown-glass water,
one foot poised,
dripping, his stillness
is its own term of art.
Were he flawed—
his bill less than stiletto,
his neck a ruined column—
how could we know
in this moment
of edge and silhouette,
when the horizon
has claimed the sun
and the winterbone trees
scratch the chiseled moon?
Chase your foolish bright sunsets
contingent as they are
upon ceremony and awe,
gaudy spectacle clattering
across the atmosphere,
shouting the obvious
as if it were mystery.
Give me this twilight,
this kingdom of almost,
of echo,
of uncertain
obsidian—
polished,
deadly.
Delmarva Review, Fall 2020, Vol. 13
Two Million Breaths
For Tahlequah—
who carried her dead calf seventeen days,
a thousand miles, through the Salish Sea
You carry your pain like a warrior
carries her dead, the strange cradle
of your face obscured by the body
limp as a child pulled from the rubble
of your world. You surface to breathe
and the rainbowed spray belies
your labor of witness, two million breaths
you shared as one. When the moment came
to give birth did you feel that startled
regret of separation, some subtle thief
who sliced out your heart still
beating? Rising, falling, unrelenting
metronome of breath to carry
this loss which belongs to us all now—
we unforgiven—this abyss of knowing
your name, the shattered light
of your passage. When you lift
your dead hope, you are a broken
bone splintering the skin of water,
a white spear through the sea.
Fledgling bobwhite quail, Chester River Field Research Station
Rattle #55, Spring 2017
http://www.rattle.com/still-life-with-birds-by-wendy-mitman-clarke/
Still Life With Birds, Extinct
The Carolina parakeet would not be the first
species to gather at its dead. They say elephants
do this too, and dolphins, who will stay for days
with a dead infant, pushing its body to the surface
to breathe. Inside the museum no living birds
attended the still life of their brethren rendered
so bright and busy among the cockleburs—
one scratching its cheek with a pointed talon,
two others seeming to croon parakeet
love songs to one another—although
the sound of that song, we can't know.
There were, however, the six dead birds
displayed beside Audubon's painting, mute
as dust, specimens the artist modeled
to create his masterpiece. I could have cupped
one in my hands, but the glass held
them all captive—the colorful painted birds
cavorting, their template kin lifeless
as an old woman's misplaced gloves—
no air in either universe.
Still life, the exhibit notes said, is generally an act
of intimacy, so why shouldn't I have stopped
beneath the familiar tree outside the museum
to reach among the homesick leaves
and hold the smooth round comfort
of the chestnut in my palm,
where I would have held
the gathered dead birds if I could,
where I would have held you.
A beach in the Jimentos Cays, southern Bahamas.
Little Patuxent Review, Winter 2018
Read The Little Patuxent Review's "Meet Our Contributors" about this poem.
Beachcombing
The United Nations Environmental Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic [causing] the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals.
—UNESCO
On the fine white beach
wandering, wading,
we find priceless treasure—
nerites, frog shells, blue sea glass
wandering, wading,
washing in with the tide,
nerites, frog shells, blue sea glass
pulled by the moon
washing in with the tide,
razors, balloons, water bottles
pulled by the moon,
baggies, microbeads, toothbrushes
razors, balloons, water bottles
carried by the waves,
baggies, microbeads, water bottles
drifting, floating
carried by the waves,
sea turtle, albatross
drifting, floating
bellies bloated
sea turtle, albatross.
We find priceless treasure—
bellies bloated
on the fine white beach.
Delmarva Review, Vol.13
Rules for Beachcombing
First, you must forgive yourself
for all that you will miss.
Agree to go empty-handed.
Nothing is here for you, per se.
For all that you will miss,
the horizon is treasure enough.
Nothing is here for you
but what the restless water brings.
The horizon is treasure enough.
Still you call the names,
what the restless water brings
from the deep—olive, moon, murex—
you call their names—
triton, tellin, limpet.
From the deep—olive, moon, murex—
comes tidewrack’s wreckage—
triton, tellin, limpet—
the unusual color, the odd shape.
In tidewrack’s wreckage
the beauty of ruin tumbles,
the unusual color, the odd shape.
The fluted column of shattered whelk
tumbles in its beautiful ruin.
Allow for the broken,
the fluted column of shattered whelk.
Fall to your knees, your skin sand-gritted
amid so many broken.
A million lives begin and end here.
Fall to your knees, your skin sand-gritted
and agree to go empty-handed.
A million lives begin and end here.
First, you must forgive yourself.
Sand and water, Exumas, Bahamas
The Summerset Review, Summer 2018
“Read After the Cold Front” and “My Father’s Pipe” in The Summerset Review
Sand
It fell on the desk there,
quiet and surprised
when I tipped the shell dusting
and inevitably rummaging
to find a particular netted olive
or banded tulip, wandering
through a thousand distant
footsteps in the sand
that sifted there suddenly
on the desk, a displaced drift
of pink and white grit,
some grey made infinite
by the endless grinding waves
and the sharp beaks of parrot fish
that transform the reef as rain
carves the mountain, rendering stone.
Where things fit, do the most good,
could be called home,
which would explain why
I brushed the grains back
into the shell’s upturned cup,
made sure none fell on the floor,
where the Oreck might trap them,
or the dogs’ reckless paws,
or any number of fates
almost as bad as the one I’d already
consigned us to, there on the desk
lost in a shell, listening for the sea.
Harvest from my garden, Eastern Shore, Maryland.
Blue River Review, Vol. 2, Issue 1, Fall 2017
Listen to "August," starting at 8:46
August
Let me just say: I know
I’m supposed to be loyal.
I planted these seeds, didn’t I?
Every day hope unfurling—
the feathery tops of carrots,
the red vein of beets—
until now, deep August,
the eggplants worn
as an immigrant’s suitcase,
the tomatoes wild and rotting
on the vine. You know
something about desperation.
I should love you for that
but your requirements for tending
exhaust me.
Squash bugs, aphids,
cutworms, late blight.
Fight your own battles.
Leave me to fight mine.
Maybe then we can agree
the weight we bear for this
dissembling bed
of vegetation is worth it—
blue riot of morning glories
warping the empty pea trellis,
finches bending spent sunflowers,
bouncing lightly, ardent gymnasts of seed.
Kuna Yala, Panama
The Delmarva Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, November 2015
“Palm Tree, Nassau” Winslow Homer (1898)
Palm trees are meant to bend this way.
Spindled and full of give,
their leaves clatter before the battering wind
that always finds them.
Their trunks don't aspire
to the rigid pillar of the lighthouse
preaching its pallid human truth to the clouds.
They bow to the changeable blue
and feather the sky
while the red flag snaps
like a sergeant marshaling the waves
that patrol the ironshore.
When the hurricane comes
and the waves hurl rocks
that shatter the lighthouse glass,
and the flag shreds into memory,
the palm trees will bend to the wind-stripped ground
and I will learn how to forgive
what I am not.
Summer sunrise at the Chester River Field Station, Eastern Shore, Maryland.
The Delmarva Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, November 2015
Imprint
At dawn in the meadow
the pine-split sunlight divides the mist
into limbs of shadow and light.
Dew-soaked, my boots wade
through the grass and find a patch that's flattened
into a shallow bed,
a haven under the arc of stars
and the liquid eyes of the doe. Her fine sharp hooves
cut these cups in the grass
where she stood, watchful,
as her fawn slept in the restless night,
and a memory of coyotes roamed like shadow.
All I know is what is left—
the imprint
of the watch-bound night, empty
before the day burns off mist and dew
and the place looks like any other in this meadow
where the grass climbs wildly to seed.
Wind writing, Bahamas.
The Delmarva Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, November 2015
Gravity
At night in the meadow
we lay the blanket down and fall back
to watch the stars in their endless migration
find the unyielding geometry of distance.
The tall grass of autumn
does not tease our faces,
nor does the dew wet our skin.
Out here, we remain untouched, you and I,
wheeling in our own orbits
of intractable light years
and the lambent echoes of stars long dead
that burned and burned, like we did.
There should be comfort in the gravity
that pins me to this blanket
like a butterfly, wings ashen under
the airless glass of this hurtling universe;
there should be comfort in knowing
I don’t have to hold on.
S/V Celilo, bound for Great Exuma, Bahamas, at sunset.
The Delmarva Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, November 2015
Undertow
The waves were not big that day
as the children slewed through the surf on their bellies and you
fixed yourself another drink and baited up,
grinning when you caught a fish that glistened
like the blued barrel of a gun
on your first cast. Nothing
ominous offshore, no lowering sky,
just the sun grinning over the good times
in the People's Republic of Gin
and Tonic. You dragged
your shimmering victim from the surf
and dangled it for a photo,
the last I have of you.
Beginner’s luck, you could say of that fish,
too innocent to be eaten by one such as you,
so you tossed it back into the sea
where the children glittered in the waves,
and the undertow in its collusion sucked sand and shell and bone,
the tumbling sea-wrecked wrack of you
spattered across the grass in the back yard
where I guess you finally understood
the Darwinian failure—
that stupid fish,
the one you threw back into the sea to live
when you knew even then
there was nothing left to do but die.
—For Tim
Alfred Eisenstaedt, Times Square V-J Day
The Delmarva Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, November 2015
The Kiss
V-J Day, Times Square
August 14, 1945
When I am kissed,
I want to be kissed this way,
kissed like war is over.
I want to drop my thin body
arched like a dancer and falling
into the unknown soldier’s arms.
I want my mouth open
to the ravaged prayer
of the survivor.
When I am kissed
I want one knee folding,
forgetting all it has carried
on sensible, weary heels.
I want my eyes closed
to the bomb-lit ruins of innocence,
the revelers in the street
who stagger and dance and cry.
When I am kissed
I want to be kissed this way,
so that for a moment at least
we yield to the wreckage of peace.