6/14/2018 Poetry By Tara A. ElliottCuriosity for Pandora How could you help not loosen that lid to see what was inside? O first woman-- contrary to the tale, it was not a box but a jar sealed so tightly with wax, that when you pried the lid from the clay, the half-moons of your fingernails splintered. The awful evils of this world clambered up the slick sides to escape their darkened confines. How quickly they all slithered out from the mouth-- all except hope, lost in the body & left clinging to its sides. Dread for Thetis I know what it’s like to be distracted, to be drawn away from endless task; even when that task is immortality-- How carefully you must have dangled your sweetbabyboy down into the swirling eddy of the dead, first pursing your lips to breathe on his dimpled face so he would draw in the air of this world, then grasping him by his left ankle to soak his foretold soul. His father never once understood what you were trying to do. I know what it is to hold my son in my arms & want more for him than I could ever give. How your fingertips left their graceless mark-- there is no word for a mother who has lost a child. ![]() Bio: Tara A. Elliott lives with her husband and son on the Eastern Shore of Maryland where she teaches English. She is the founder and director of Salisbury Poetry Week, serves as a facilitator for Salisbury University's Lighthouse Literary Guild, and is the co-chair of the 2019 Bay to Ocean Writer's Conference. She is honored to have been selected as the 2018 Maryland Humanities' Teacher of the Year. Her recent poems have been published in MER, The TAOS Journal of International Poetry & Art, and Wildness, among others, and are forthcoming in Triggerfish Critical Review, and The American Journal of Poetry. |
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