Poetry by Mary Sexson

              Mike Maguire CC



​
Anything Can Happen

You emerge from this round self-assured,
confident that you can lick
this addiction and get your life back.

You text your plans
for the next go-round to your parents,
with thank you’s and apologies in place.
You touch up that episode,
black out the screwed-up part
and doll up the rest of it.

Maybe you didn’t get kicked out
of the half-way house,
just wanted to leave.
Maybe they’ll take you back
and let you prove yourself.
Maybe you’ll lay down the needle
and pick up a violin.
Who knows?  Anything can happen,
anything at all.





Recovery

I am pondering the changes in you,
sitting back quietly and watching
day to day.

I know it hasn’t
been easy, the walk from there
to here.  There is still a pull
from within you that you fight
to overcome.  
.
I cannot applaud just yet.
I am stuck, too, in that old way
of thinking, seeing you

from my own point of view, lost
and broken.





​Tell Her

This is a prayer, universe.
Receive it, take it up

as you would the clouds,
absorb it as you do the rain,

hold it as you do the stars,
spread out across

your velvet lap.  Hold her now
as you would a child,

press her close to you
and whisper sweetly

in her ear – tell her
she must live.

​

Mary Sexson is author of the award-winning book, 103 in the Light, Selected Poems 1996-2000 (Restoration Press), co-author of Company of Women, New and Selected Poems (Chatter House Press).  Her poetry has appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, Hoosier Lit, New Verse News, and several anthologies.  Sexson has recent work in Last Stanza Poetry Journal:  Altered States (Stackfreed Press 2021). Her work is archived in INverse Poetry Archives, for Hoosier Poets.  Her poetry on the pandemic was published through Indianapolis Writers Center’s publication, What Was and Will Be.  Sexson’s poem, “Close”, was choreographed by Dance Kaleidoscope. Her latest work can be found in Laureate:  Literary Journal of the Arts for Lawrence (2021).

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