THE BEADED CURTAIN
Spire Press, 2009, 21 pp.
ISBN 13: 978-1-934828-08-3
$8.00 – signed by author
. . .
Sample Poems
CARNATION
In another life, you never stepped
into an office; you were a fisherman.
You knew your plot of the sea,
each difficult crevice and secret softness,
the way one knows a lover’s face.
When you closed your eyes, you saw
piles of silver bodies like paper clips.
At night you dreamt of your naked wife
covered in wet scales, of slipping
a beckoning finger into her open mouth.
When you woke and turned to touch
her skin, it was always smooth as water.
In another life, I was this woman –
yes, but also the sea. Also the hook.
. . .
SPIRITUALITY WORKSHOP
Everyone wants to talk about theirs.
The long tunnel. The musical finale.
Of course the Bright Light – like Santa’s sack,
all that concentrated goodness.
Some speak of kindly teachers with grave secrets,
dead relatives waiting in nightgowns.
Happiness, they say, is everywhere,
blooming like an untamed and fertile garden,
and then they look at each other softly
like parents over a sleeping baby.
I feel like the universe’s overprotected child,
a hermit in my own body, never smelled red,
only multicolored dimension of love I’ve seen
was painted on the side of a groovy uncle’s van.
Then a woman with a face like a stoned saint
describes lying in the grass, ear to the ground,
and hearing God’s voice, sweet as a sitcom father’s,
and I wonder if I’ve just missed mine somehow,
mistaken it for the wind or indigestion.
Now, having vowed to be more attentive,
I’m freezing at the sign of a turning leaf,
staring into the eyes of every stray dog.
I’m like one of those limo drivers at the airport,
waiting with a sign that reads Spiritual Experience,
waiting for it to rush up with a suitcase
and while I’ve perched on a park bench,
eyes closed, listening hard for my soul,
someone sits beside me and begins to hum.
. . .
Praise for The Beaded Curtain
In her debut collection The Beaded Curtain, Megan Green takes on the big questions. Whether pondering remnants of the Holocaust, the soul’s dimensions: Is it bigger than a bread box? Can you freeze it?, or an existential moment watching a boy comb a river for fish, this bold, inquisitive poet pays unflagging attention to the world’s everyday beauty and decay. The result is a collection of poetry that delivers the goods, line after standout line.
—Michelle Bitting, author of Good Friday Kiss
What most grips me about Megan Green’s poetry is how unobtrusive Green is as poet. Even in her more personal poems she brings to mind Emerson’s “Transparent Eyeball,” which, to this reader, is a refreshing and delightful thing, particularly in a world where everyone seems to be parading their first person so stridently, aggressively, and unnecessarily. Instead of “follow me,” Green’s poetry is more “come and see,” and speaks to us as though through a beaded curtain, leaving many of life’s uncertainties uncertain, but always complicated and confronted in the proper places and ways. If you find yourself, as I do, wondering occasionally about the last time you were spoken to crucially, this collection will provide an excellent answer, and the answer will be more resounding after each reading.
—Erik Campbell, author of Arguments for Stillness
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About the Author
Megan Green is the assistant editor of Rattle magazine. Her poems have appeared in such publications as 32 Poems, Connecticut River Review, Crab Creek Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Ninth Letter, Paterson Literary Review, and Apple Valley Review. Green’s chapbook, The Beaded Curtain, is available from Spire Press. She is married to poet Timothy Green and lives in Los Angeles.
