Poetry

Of Wilde Marjerome

Of Wilde Marjerome “ministered against the swooning of the heart” Gerard’s Herball, Johnson ed., 1636 In accent austral & thick with plummet, a balmy arctic late November fragrance, womanly but in my love’s voice, its deepest draught I huffed, a girl, in pantry spice closet of my ancestors, whetted concoctions brandied in bowls, jars of clove, shivery with shadow, & also many threaded roots, tureened in jars. My heart was green, standing there, in secret. As when before you. Whom I dream to touch, bestrew, despite & in my agita. In need. “A medicine to be licked.” A creed.

Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of over ten books, most recently Orexia: Poems (2017) and the forthcoming Madrigalia: New & Selected Poems (2021). Her honors include a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and an NEH Distinguished Professorship. Her “Second Acts” column on second books of poetry is a regular feature at the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is professor and director of creative writing at the University of Virginia.

FROM Volume 70, Number 2

Issue 70.2, Spring 2021

Of Wilde Marjerome

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