if your hands can reach me
then let them pour gold honey
from tip to tip and across my thighs
to dream is itself a dream of touch
standing on a rugged cliffside
i see you below in the water waiting
your lips parting with my name
spread across them in silence
your arms stretched through horizon songs
waiting for the sun to go away
so you can pull my darkness
into the wet mouth of your hungry night
Rita S. Spalding studied in London and graduated summa cum laude from Murray State University in December 2024. She is recipient of the 2025 Murray State Outstanding Senior in Sociology Award. She has been published in 18 Calliope anthologies, National Library of Poetry, AX-POW Magazine, The Heartland Review, Kentucky Monthly Magazine, Keeping the Flame Alive, Fallen, Rebirth, The Rye Whiskey Review, Walden’s Poetry and Reviews, Poet-Tree Magazine and Kentucky Humanities. Her first book, Abstract Ribbons, was published in 1992 and her two most recent books, published in 2025, are What is Beauty, and The Eighth.
Rita was formerly director of Women Who Write, where in 2006 she helped to establish the annual Kentucky Women's Book Festival, and had the pleasure of meeting writer and activist bell hooks. She also served as panelist for the Dorothy Clay Norton Fellowships at the Mary Anderson Center, and was on the committee to nominate Maureen Morehead as the 2011-12 Kentucky poet laureate.
No comments:
Post a Comment