New York City poet Rose DeMaris has given readers a work a elegance and solitude, at times desolate, at times sensuous, at times hopeful and full of self-discovery and self-awareness, and at times, lonely and self-sufficient. “Most of my poetry arises from a place where the natural world, human longings, and various divinities all intersect,” Rose explained to The Dewdrop. “It should be mentioned that the poem is partly inspired by (or “after”) Federico Garcia Lorca’s ‘Song of the Barren Orange Tree’ (translated by W.S. Merwin), a poem I’ve loved for a long time,” she clarified.
Song of the Barren Orange Tree Who Is Nourished by Her Own Fallen Leaves From the torn leaf it leaks: curiously fertile abandonment sap dense with crystalline molecules, with salt and trace star material. Why did I not become the pregnant farm wife, naked in the yard, watering her green strawberries? From the torn leaf it leaks: night-repertoire of the mocker who perches, who trills, calling for the mate I call for. I call out of the torn leaf and it leaks what I willingly drink, milk of my own tattered life, tart with slight toxicity, but with scent of crushed green. I think it, I grow it, my own rustling art. I claim it. I lick my lips desolate of its precious residue and then I make more of it.
Rose DeMaris
Rose DeMaris’ poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, Alaska Quarterly Review, Image Journal, Roanoke Review, Qu Literary Magazine, Vassar Review, Cold Mountain Review, Big Sky Journal, and elsewhere. She spent many years living, writing, and exploring in Montana before moving to New York City, where she is a Poetry MFA candidate and Teaching Fellow at Columbia University. rosedemaris.com / IG: @rose.demaris