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Marguerite Keil Flanders

Marguerite Keil Flanders is a member of Ocean State Poets, an outreach group working to encourage poetry in every community in Rhode Island. She is part of an ongoing writing workshop that meets every other Saturday at the Men's Medium Security Prison in Cranston. 

Having worked as an environmental advocate in the field of Urban Forestry and served on her town's Conservation Commission, Margie is now putting creativity and imagination at the center of her life.

She plays violin in a small community string orchestra, and loves practicing in her studio, where she can watch the woods breathing from her windows. Her biggest, not so secret, passion is swimming in the ocean, which she does whenever she can, even in cold months with a wetsuit that makes her look like an alien.

Her work has appeared in Boston Review, Yankee Magazine, Nimrod International Journal, Comstock Review, Poetry East, The Main Street Rag and in other literary magazines.

Read Margie's insightful essay that appeared in the OPP April 2013 newsletter, Poetry: The Highway to Humility

( Here is a video recording of Margie's reading at North Kingstown library 4/3/2013 )


Margie's Origami micro-chapbooks & selected poems are available below.

Microchap

  Selected Poems 

Long Dark: Poems of an Insomniac

   

 

Click title to download microchap

Marguerit K Flanders CVR Long Dark 2013

Cover Art: Paul Signac
Portrait of Félix Fénéon

Sleep Remedy

Gather:
the florid promise of bird feathers
the underside of violet petals
scrapings from cedar bark
tangle of distant drumbeats
the complexion of a fox
glimpse of a kiss & a carnation
the darkness from two corners
three questions & four grasses
silhouette of a sassafras tree
glint of mica, reflected in a new dime
reduction of high jinx
the cheek fur from a chipmunk
a pinch of forgiveness
and clear water from a stream

Mix well and form into lozenges
(figure out how to make lozenges
next time you can't sleep)
Take as needed.

 

Night

rolls me up
like a crepe, or a carpet,
encloses me in its press
of nourishment.
June shrinks the dark;
before I am even ready
to doze, light
spreads thinly through
the woods. My rhythms
of wakefulness and laughter
defy earth's rounding
of the sun. When the moon
rises at dawn, I shut
my soul's windows,
and try, once again,
to go under

Dawn For One Who Has Not Slept

Spare the dreaming, let night's book remain
open. Light tempts me, but I stay under
the still hands of darkness, safe and
fraught with a new day's threat;
the back alley of my into
open heart I am sent,
trawling for a few
new words, or
even just
one.

 

Open Window

Too early, the smell of flirty peonies,
the mower blades gnash and scold
my dreams, morning flutters in
like dirty money, and I turn over.
The dogs next door proclaim.
I beg, leave me to my licking
and gathering of medicine,
my surrender. I fall back twice,
yanked apart by fangs of sun,
until I’ve banished the priesthood
of light, and disappeared
into the Old Religion of sleep.

Long Dark

Last night I forgot to sleep,
closed my notebook, traced
a labyrinth on the blotter,
spilled nothing, broke
nothing, did not cry for my mother,
though the knot of my navel
grows raw and red,
as if untying.
This morning I wear her rings
as if I am an heiress. I knock a vase
off the shelf as if I'm not.
                     Her death still
makes me unable to lie down,
and even the return of light
is a gift I'm too ashamed to receive.
 
 
Mary's Song
 

Night birds steal my sleep
snatch it between their chirpings
of delight and lust. In this month
of lilacs and balmy musings
everyone needs a mate
or a dream of one. Apple trees
scatter confetti over the lonely
singers in the branches.
The bad news of spring
dissipates, arguments let go.
The keening of winter
has long since been replaced
by new longings for joy.
So the birds take my dreams,
but give me back a poem.
We are more than even;
here comes dawn,
and a new day's music.


Marguerite Keil Flanders © 2013

When Pearl Was Young - Vol. I

   

 

 Click title to download microchap

Marguerite K Flanders CVR When Pearl was Young V 1 2009 

DADDY

Daddy does magic tricks
that make her friends giggle.
But he isn't always happy.

At the beach he swims straight out,
away from Mommy and Pearl
on their towels. Will he come back?

At six Pearl makes her first book,
meticulously cuts and folds
little white pages, all empty
except the title on the front:
How To Be A Grouch. She gives it

to her father, knowing how to break
his heart. Years later
he will give it back to her,
knowing how to break hers.

 

BRAIDS

The Junior Choir lines up
for the Easter anthem,
blue robes, white collars.
The mean boy pulls
Pearl's ribbons;
the silky braids fall free.
Her eyes fire with shame
at being so disliked,
singled out. She
doesn't know he
just wanted to see
how they worked.

 

SNOW ANIMALS

On snow days, Pearl
and two friends make animals
big enough to sit on, pretending
to race until their fannies
are wet and cold.
Her friends make snow horses,
but Pearl, only so so about horses,
creates a lump, large, beautiful and
strong, so it can be anything
she wants it to be.
And it is always
one imaginary nose
ahead of their horses.

 

 

Mrs. Jackson, 3rd Grade

Blue dress, she'll be nice;
Red dress, she'll be mean,
will glare and speak ice.
Her eyes will glint, she'll shame
the boy who can't sing on key.
 
Once she made fun of Pearl
for mispronouncing determined,
told her to repeat it for another teacher.
She laughed, the other teacher didn't.
 
Her eyes are stones. When she reads
from the black bible, Pearl makes her
grow smaller and smaller
until she disappears.
 
 
TWISTED SILVER
 

Pearl finds a ring
under the bleachers,
Fourth of July night,
cherishes it for five days,
then loses it in the ocean.
No reason to cry: it came
like light, left like dark

 
Marguerite Keil Flanders © 2009

When Pearl Was Young - Vol. II

   

 

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Marguerite Keil Flanders CVR When Pearl was Young V 2 2010

Pearl's Big Brother

1.
On her 3rd birthday, Mommy
gives her the plush stuffed Dog.
Pearl swoons. So when her brother
gives her the crude little creature
he made from paper and a clothes pin,
she thinks it is a joke, throws it
out on the front porch. In the rain.
All their eyes say she did wrong.
No offense to her brother,
but don't they get how Dog
is all she ever needed or wanted?

 

2.
Her brother comes home from
camp,
dark scab on his lip.
A boomerang
came back
at him. Pearl asks
"Isn't that the point?"

 

3.
At Buzzard's Bay, he ties a kite
to her flipflop, let's go. It sails up
and over the dune, skims across water.
They drag the boat over rocks
into the shallows, jump in, laughing,
rowing until the kite drops.
They pull it from the waves,
and she puts her flipflop
back on, so happy to have a brother.

 

Bees

Clouds well up during dinner.
Pearl fidgets with her fork, can't be
contained, slams the screen door
behind her, runs uphill to the school,
up the grand wide stairs, waving arms
at the first splatters of rain
with their fruited smell and release.
Calm again, and wet, she returns
You and the bees home.
says Daddy, when she's back
Crazy before at the table.
. He's right, a storm
and she's glad he knows

 

First Dream

Pearl watches as Mommy's car
smashes into a chainlinked fence
and she breaks her neck.
Even Mommy can't convince her
it was just a dream.
 
To Pearl, not yet
is the same as already.
 
It's like her life started
in that dream, and will speed on
until it comes to pass.
 
And she knows it will,
knows there is no way
to keep Mommy safe.
 
Marguerite Keil Flanders © 2010