MAGHEN ROBERSON - POEMS

Maghen Roberson is an accountant and poet from Oklahoma. She recently had one poem accepted for the upcoming anthology Rewrite Sunlight and one poem set to be published in the first online issue of Your Only Sister. She spends most of her time at work, in school for a Master’s degree, working on her first book of poetry, and trying to keep up with her two red-headed daughters.

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Old Honey
​

​ 
How can the sun that ran a light finger
Along my child-sized bones be the same
Which cowered behind stratus when
I screamed for it to burn me? How
 
Do you outrun water when your feet
Sink in the mire? Sticky like memories.
When you sweep possibilities under the rug
For years, they crawl out one day
 
When you think you’re past it all and
The honey has turned to clumped crystals.
But sugar sneers with sweetness at the edges
Of too well-remembered happiness.
 
Because one day you’re mixing batter
For a hot waffle iron, and the next you wake to find
That your children don’t want them anymore.
The sun feels boiled and stagnant, and
 
Your own couch grows silently wider
Around your hips and sucks you in
When you sit still too long, waiting
For honey to reliquify without heat.

Sand
​

​Spill the sun
And mix it with the tide
As I shift underneath your feet.
 
Days come and drift away.
Tourists rest their leaden legs.
A year passes, another,
Ten more, then twenty.
 
Do you know
All that I’ve seen?
I am the sand which
Covers everything.
I am tiny granules
Soaking up secrets
And melting them away.
 
The ocean has depths
Unfathomable; everyone knows.
But so do I,
And you often forget
That I am the sand
Which covers a secret
And melts it away
On top of another,
Mixed into the earth.
 
Your toes sink in,
And you still don’t hear
The past.
 
 

Train Ride
​

​It’s like riding on a train
At 200 miles an hour
And your words
Tearing a hole in your throat
Sweet as a bullet.
You have a window seat
To peek at the bodies
Of the mother loving
And the old man dying.
     I want off
     I want off,
And all you have to do
Is say it.
But the word you need
Is wrapped around a knife,
Slicing the dry corners
Of your mouth.
     Stop stop stop
Rattles around your lungs,
But all you find
Is blood on your tongue
When you part your lips.
     Let me off
     Let me off,
     (I think I’ll jump
     Through this window).
 
 

Rebel Hearts Love
​

​Mother said
Sing so pretty,
Caress a few keys
On the piano
(Classical of course)
Squeeze your way into
An orchestral
Place of promise.
 
Be patient. Calm.
Love the idea
Of becoming as normal
As a three-bedroom house
On a silky suburb street.
Join the masses
(If only as a speck).
 
But rebel hearts
Love defiantly:
Jazzy sways around
Black and white keys,
Slouchy shirts sinking
In all the wrong places.
 
Curious though,
How the Odyssey
Of your childhood
Is tattooed on your arms
(A reminiscence),
 
Matching the soft
Lines of your lips
When you speak
Of your mother
 
And the times her hands
Couldn’t wrap themselves
Around your edges.