Two Poems by Miriam O’Neal
Change
I begin again on the far side
of something I only barely understand
as holy. Like the orange light
that drills through the west-facing windows
of the barn, spills out the other side
so the pear tree’s pale green lichens glow
at sunset, and the fine ice over the grass
seems steeped in rose-hip tea.
In the long, mowed fields of midday,
where the hedgerows of autumn olive
barely shook on the winter breeze,
I saw my own body striding
like it knew where it was and who loved it—
felt the way the space between us
opened again, and closed, and opened
as simply as breathing.
Previously published by Silver Needle Press (July 2018),
and forthcoming in Body Dialogues by Miriam O’Neal (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2019).
Evensong
Today the rain falls cold and fast—
bangs on my windows, little fists.
Percussion, I say: the wind
the surging bass, the feathery snare of my husband’s
breath in sleep, my snoring dog,
the steady click
of my fingers at the keyboard—
All Amens.
All Amens.
Forthcoming in Body Dialogues by Miriam O’Neal (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2019.)
Miriam O’Neal’s work has appeared or is coming soon in Blackbird Journal,
The Ekphrastic Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Parentheses Journal, Passager
Journal, Ragazine, and elsewhere. She has 2 collections of poetry, We Start With
What We’re Given (Kelsay Books, 2018) and The Body Dialogues (due in early
2020 from Lily Poetry Review). She was awarded a Beginning Translator’s
Fellowship from the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) for her
translation of Alda Merini’s, Poema della Croce. She was a 2019 Pushcart Prize
nominee, and has been named a 2019 Commendable Poet by the International
Westival Poetry Competition, and a 2019 Poet of Note by the Disquiet International
Poetry Competition. She lives in Plymouth, MA.
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