Awake by Marlene Grand Maître

January 23, 2023
Poem title: Awake Poet name: Marlene Grand Maitre Poem: Sleep is a nomad roaming the Sahara, the Kalahari, far from my bed, a desert too dry for dreaming; far from the time-sculpted dunes of my hips and thighs, thinning skin crinkled like crepe paper. Down the hall, the bathtub offers its enamel embrace, the sturdy legs of a steadfast suitor. The water, a tribe of lovers lapping, licking, calling my aging body beautiful. I won’t chase sleep like Dietrich running into the desert after Gary Cooper in Morocco. Let sleep pitch its tent. Let it come to me. End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Marlene Grand Maître Previously published in The Malahat Review, 2003. Marlene Grand Maître’s chapbook Cancer’s Rogue Season was published by Frog Hollow Press in 2020. Her work has also appeared in many literary journals, and in nine anthologies, most recently in Worth More Standing (Caitlin, 2021), Sweet Water: Poems For The Watersheds (Caitlin, 2020) and Voicing Suicide (Ekstasis, 2020). She has won Freefall’s and the Fed. of BC Writers’ poetry contests. She can be heard reading her work online at Planet Earth Poetry’s Poets’ Caravan. A member of the Planet Earth Poetry Society Board, her full-length poetry ms. When A Woman Is A Mountain, is out there now looking for a good home.
Poem title: Awake Poet name: Marlene Grand Maitre Poem: Sleep is a nomad roaming the Sahara, the Kalahari, far from my bed, a desert too dry for dreaming; far from the time-sculpted dunes of my hips and thighs, thinning skin crinkled like crepe paper. Down the hall, the bathtub offers its enamel embrace, the sturdy legs of a steadfast suitor. The water, a tribe of lovers lapping, licking, calling my aging body beautiful. I won’t chase sleep like Dietrich running into the desert after Gary Cooper in Morocco. Let sleep pitch its tent. Let it come to me. End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Marlene Grand Maître Previously published in The Malahat Review, 2003. Marlene Grand Maître’s chapbook Cancer’s Rogue Season was published by Frog Hollow Press in 2020. Her work has also appeared in many literary journals, and in nine anthologies, most recently in Worth More Standing (Caitlin, 2021), Sweet Water: Poems For The Watersheds (Caitlin, 2020) and Voicing Suicide (Ekstasis, 2020). She has won Freefall’s and the Fed. of BC Writers’ poetry contests. She can be heard reading her work online at Planet Earth Poetry’s Poets’ Caravan. A member of the Planet Earth Poetry Society Board, her full-length poetry ms. When A Woman Is A Mountain, is out there now looking for a good home.