Poetry by Natalie Marino

                         ​Robert Couse-Baker CC




​After Endings


Her room is a jar of molasses, 
piled calendars mark 
the gone years.

My grandmother sits up in her bed 
covered by afghans 
soured by coffee stains 

and she never opens her window 
anymore, its surface too opaque 
to reflect the sugar in sunshine.

My grandmother lives in the blue 
of the television, her last loves 
its many Mexican soap operas.

I do not understand 
and I do understand. 
Her husband left her 

and she lost her pink house.
She waits for Don Juans 
who are not coming,

smoking cigarettes 
and painting her nails 
again.





​Exhale, Inhale


If only I knew what sad means.
Instead, I live inside melancholy, 
a sticky cactus, with velcro fingers 
inside a blue desert rejecting water.

I light my photographs on fire 
to burn the black memories  
but the mirror’s glare always 
gives me a headache. 

I stitch a blanket silencing song, 
and wait for bright balloons.
I wait to exhale, and then inhale 
the jasmine hope of morning dew.

Natalie Marino is a writer, mother, and physician. She has work in Barren Magazine, Feedlit Mag, Idle Ink, and Indolent Books. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Thousand Oaks, California.

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