Mary Morris

Portrait of Spain, Cubism

A fence of teeth shifts     slightly in the jaw

in a land where vendors and grocers
entertain the idea of becoming
matadores or picadores

from an overabundance    of the shiny blood of oil in a painting by El Greco

Background of dark planets            tenebrous shadows on torn velvet
the way Picasso paints her face       shaping the shift of squares
Too much running of the bulls        stampede of sharp planes

So much filigree of gold                          trembling in the house of belief
as tiny red harlequins serve                      the Mass of Thieves
A litany of perspective                             storms of hair and teeth

Guernica—causing even the best of sailors to turn back
toward the land of their mothers and farming

Soft and cooing      doves      the magician’s crow        draw us
toward first light—all angles    through stained-glass windows

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Mary Morris is the author of three books of poetry: Enter Water, Swimmer, Dear October, and Late Self-Portraits, forthcoming in 2022 from MSU Press (selected by Leila Chatti for the Wheelbarrow Books Prize). Her poems have been published in Poetry, The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, The Los Angeles Review, Poetry Northwest, Arts & Letters, Boulevard and Poetry Daily. A recipient of the Rita Dove Award, Western Humanities Review Mountain West Prize and the New Mexico Discovery Award, Mary has also won the 2021 National Federation Press Women’s Book Award for her collection of poems, Dear October. She has been invited to read her work at the Library of Congress, which aired on National Public Radio. Most recently, Kwame Dawes selected her work for American Life in Poetry, established by the Poetry Foundation.