Thursday, November 4, 2021

GAS Featured Poet: Michele Mekel

 



Michele Mekel wears many hats: bioethicist, educator, poetess, cat herder, and woman. Her work appears in academic and creative publications, and has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, nominated for Best of the Net, and translated into Cherokee. She is co-principal investigator of Viral Imaginations: COVID-19 (viralimaginations.psu.edu).

The Fates

 

From the State of Nature,

Dopamine Receptor DR2D
came uninvited to my naming.

Never one to run alone,
she brought close companions
from the Province of Nurture.

On one arm, 

hung Maternal Depression.
Marital Stress trailed closely
on their heels.

The unwelcome trio smirked,
cast their spells upon a colicky child—
already touched in vitro
by the baneful fingers of Rubella.

One gifted Melancholy

as nursemaid and
constant companion.

Another bequeathed Anxiety

as third wheel
in future romantic relations.

The last,

upon reading my tiny palm,
offered up Ambiguous Loss
as North Star.




231 W. Linn Street

 

Like a bellows,

doors, windows

open, close

breathing ghostly life

into this tired house.

 

Restless,

these specters abide

long dead, side-long spied

in halls, along floors

I now pace.



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