MAUREEN DANIELS - POEMS

Maureen Daniels teaches English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where she is also a doctoral fellow in creative writing. She is an editorial assistant for Prairie Schooner and Western American Literature. Her work has recently been published in Sinister Wisdom, Wilde Magazine, Gertrude Press, Third Wednesday and the South Florida Poetry Review. 

​Nixie

​You arrived
with your broken
umbrella,
 
your new
dress dripping
green.
 
Take a stab
at being strange
again
 
and burn
a random
button off
 
my blouse.
As long as you
can still
 
catch
dragonflies in
your teeth.
 
Each opening
to you
is in season.
 
 
 

​Penultimate Night in Siena
 

Last night I dreamt Sheila
and I
were in a plane going down.
 
Donna was sitting across
the aisle
and as we were about to crash
 
I said, I can’t die. I have children.
Donna
reached across the aisle
 
to touch my arm and said,
It’s okay.
That life was only a dream.
 

​Eldorado

​Life is a second hand Cadillac
parked in my father’s garage.
 
I am nine in the backseat of summer,
asleep on the cushioned velour
 
after the long drive home
from Santa Cruz. I want
 
a whole house this luxurious,
a future exactly this brown.
 
You’d think I’d fallen
for wallpaper, so enamored I was
 
to sit so still in this world on wheels.
While dreaming, cats
 
curled onto the warm metal
hood as the car ticked itself cool.
 
On the other side of the garage door,
California loomed over
 
the quiet, carpeted steps
back to my moonlit room.