Maura Pellettieri

singed time,
                the roses always speaking
to know
the body through the window in containment
apart from
                wrongdoing. sequences of flaking
shadow, shadow turning
to skin. what’s the mark in an unmarked sky
that turns void into place? what’s
left living after every wilderness
is accounted for? leaves
batter me, then embrace. I remember
how alone I was when I arrived here
with people all around me, yet not feeling
alone. I thought that objects could be borrowed,
that matter wasn’t time-bound, that memory existed
and would stay
where it was, yet that moments could be left
and found again. I thought the friendships that were mine
were incarnate in me endlessly.
I thought time was an arrow that only led
to more money. If unproven, or if proven wrong,
none of these were wrong. I was told to consider
money-making as an act of giving birth—get
in the bathtub,
have a good partner, find them without trying,
be effusive, push, push. I was asked
to be adjacent to my wishes. I was likened to a chef
who cooked sex. I borrowed objects and friendships borrowed me
from time. I was implicitly in a
beautiful beginning because of a certain garden,
because of what space does to trees
on a certain hill. I was nearly always tired, but when
I stood up, I flew. I was implicitly on a precipice
of Dante’s spiral looking down,
but could see nothing of hell.


I sometimes want or will return even to places
and beings I no longer want. They arrive in form
in front of me, speaking strange procedures
into billowing linen. There is a pinprick in the distance
between their love and their speech,
and then the pinhead touches air and gathers
an insularity, a round quiet bubble of miraging
steam. I can sometimes pop it by walking
through it,—
                    a light effervescence escapes
the longer shadow, scraping all skies who are timebound,—
though as often, it seams
to other bubbles,
floats away in a comradeship of moments or
momentary hopes; it aches in bodies unknowing
of its absence
from them, feels the lick of sweat outside of it,
cries out imperceptibly, tremors
when it rains.

pink exigency out the window; i am bottled;
will they or won’t they, i must age backwards
coming through the portal of your living and
give a daughter no one’s seen before, never
in existence, no one can yet comprehend, yet
is she true. were i bauchelard, i would have
the story: importance of the first house and
the first form’s calm; but it was not. the floorboards
creaked with a wreaking lack of temperance
and bodies (not ours) flung themselves
through us, wasting.


i want only to come home, so that is what i do.
i do it everywhere i go: home to the grocery store,
home to the parklet, go home to the coffee shop,
the friend’s house, the corner shul, the attempt at
honesty, the rose and jasmine sprawled and growing
up all over, the friendship that is hungry,
the hunger, the house
that is not a home.


when nothing seems to change, i cry out.
the body held in me is held. i hear a star:
is somewhere, wanting.

Maura Pellettieri is a writer and artist. Their work can be found in Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Fairy Tale Review, The Literary Review, The Kenyon Review, On The Seawall, Guernica, Ayin, and others. They teach ecopoetics and creative writing, and provide editorial guidance to writers, artists, and organizations. They are the founding editor of Crystal and Flame, an experimental art writing journal in development. They received their MFA at Washington University in St. Louis.