Two poems by Mona Dash
A reading by Selma Carvalho
For Plath, for Love
Don’t
Let us then recite Plath’s poetry
Let us wear white bikinis and smile
up at the sky, blue in our hearts as in the heavens
Let us sing mad girl love songs and in its rhymes
search thunderbirds, hold the bird close
dip into its heart, tasting its blood, yours, mine
Let us find these Hughes-like men who love
deeply, amorously, thick-honeyed words
that choke so well, filling us, filling us
with still, deep water, cleansing and drowning
who know how to twist deep into us, severing
every self-belief, every little hope we have
burning away the mind-body-soul chain
Don’t
Let us write, write crazily into the night
and let our words howl in the still dawn
and let us then open the oven door
and lie ourselves in, breathing in purist like
a single strain of air, lying still then, lying still
while our children are in their beds, dreaming
dreaming.
Touched
Like the gold glint
On red autumn leaf
Like the moonlight
On gable rooftops
Like early morning mist on
Petals and gossamer
Like the deepest breath
At night time sleep
Like underground streams
That sing beneath deep earth
Like violets in the sun opening
Under wide expanses skies
Touched
Touched
A Map of the Self poems by Mona Dash
Published by Linen Press, 2025.
Click here to order.
Cover banner by Ricardo Gomes downloaded from Unsplash.