EDITH-MARIE GREEN - POEMS

Edith-Marie Green is a writer and college student from Mississippi. An international studies major, she tends to favor poetry, fantasy, and science fiction in her writing. Her work has also appeared in Southern Voices, Emerge Literary Journal, Soultalk Magazine, and several other publications.

​who told you that you were god

every time i watch a sunset 
(like right now)
it is as if I see you in a dream
Your eager face close to mine as you tell me your fears
“i love you” I thought 
(love and in love are different)
you spread out your hands and spoke
of the interconnectedness of all things
you told me no one’s ever
gone.
you hid your knife and you heart of gold well but
but now you speak hate and infect 
this world of light.
i liked you better before
they gave you a gun
and told you
that you
were
god. ​

moon//stars
​

i will not say i loved you as 
the moon and stars love each other
because they are not 
things
that can love.
but then again--
maybe we were like that
a stretched out metaphor of low gravity and heat death
that sent people spinning.
i’ll play cassiopeia the queen
far away from you, a rock around gaia 
(we were both lost in space)

​

Thousand Madonnas

I come from the land of a thousand Madonnas, beautiful it could be
But the babes were all torn from their mothers, so now it is but a sea of briny tears
I went away to the land of dreams, where every day, you dream the same thing
But at night I still hear children calling out to me.
But dreams are greedy, they don’t care who’s needy, I could scream out a window, jump, too
Do anything that I myself could do, but it feels like it wouldn’t make a difference.
I’m a human, not a machine, and when I hear people scream, I run.
Jump off of this world and into the next, I beg and beg and beg
And they tell me no one can save us.
But I’ve dreamed the dreams, and I’ve seen the people’s eyes, and I know that if we just try…


I had a friend once, who I saw God in, and she died.
And I kneeled and asked my Father above, “Why?”
He had no answers, none to satisfy, so I wandered in the darkness 
Until one, by one, by one, lights turned on.
Funny how they did that, really. 
Don’t pity me, I’m just sad and I think often about the life she had
And how she heard the children, and so did I.


Thousand Madonnas, huh?
That many of the mother and child?
Fascinating, really, say the greedy dreams, but who cares?
I cared, and she cared, and we can’t—we can’t have been the only ones.
I tried just running but here pain stays, I won’t be rid of it, not today…
But maybe tomorrow.
I stop running and I kneel down again, and I thank God for my beautiful, beautiful friend
And I cry and as I do I think, “Every time….every time I blink...things get better.”
So I blink away the tears, and keep digging the tunnel for the children 
To rejoin their mothers
So maybe then we can love each other.

​