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Sep 25, 2024 | 
conjunctions.com | Mary Jo Bang
CANTO XXIIAwestruck, I turned to my guideLike some little kid who keeps running backTo the one in whom they have the most confidence,And she—like a mother who’s quick to sootheHer pale and breathless child with a voice That’s always ready to respond—Said to me: “Don’t you get that you’re in heaven? And don’t you get that heaven is entirely holy,And what’s done here is done with righteous zeal?
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May 27, 2024 | 
newyorker.com | Mary Jo Bang
I have the sun’s eye one minute—the next, I’m going to bed with it. Last night, I dreamed of rosemary,for remembrance and for a babyborn to a woman who livedin an apartment building. In the dream,the dead and I said goodbyeat the door. I tried to buy a magazinein a drugstore, but nothing was easy. Nothing is easy when you’re shoppingfor the dead. Maybe toys, I thought,as I passed some boys playingby the side of a road. Maybe a gold keywith which to open a coffin lid.
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May 6, 2024 | 
newyorker.com | Mary Jo Bang
As in Hello, which is as good as any beginning. A pouty look, a flirty look, how should onelook? To be the queen of anythingisn’t easy. What is easy? You have got this,is frequently said. Frequently recently. To be favored, to have grace bestowed uponwhen everyone in the Book of Hours is busycontorting themselves to make senseof what it feels like to be in the light.
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Feb 9, 2024 | 
poetryfoundation.org | Mary Jo Bang
I was living a life that was more
or less filled with misfiring synapses
inside a braincase. They said and said
and never stopped saying, “You are
that problem that can’t be undone,
a daughter that keeps becoming
what keeps her mother awake.” I was
in that moment mother to myself.
I was living a life filled with sky, gray
to cobalt blue, the robe that wraps
the day and keeps us together as long
as it lasts.
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Feb 2, 2024 | 
poetryfoundation.org | Mary Jo Bang
You once sat on straw mats but clearly
it wasn’t enough.
It must not have been
since you lifted the mat a few inches
and added pegs at the corners.
You knew how legs worked,
you used them to look for your food.
Was the elevation meant to match
the hierarchy inside your head?
Higher is better as long as
you’re the one higher up, is that it?
In the beginning,
I was happy to help. Lean on me,
take a load off, Sally.
I stood by while you added
upholstery, leather even, but electricity?
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Nov 18, 2023 | 
poetryfoundation.org | Mary Jo Bang |Daisy Fried
Fragile like a child is fragile.
Destined not to be forever.
Destined to become other
To mother. Here I am
Sitting on a chair, thinking
About you. Thinking
About how it was
To talk to you. How sometimes it was wonderful
And sometimes it was awful. How drugs when drugs were
Undid the good almost entirely
But not entirely
Because good could always be seen
Glimmering like lame glimmers
In the window of a shop
Called Beautiful
Things Never Last Forever.
I loved you. I love you. You were.
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Sep 11, 2023 | 
thebaffler.com | Mary Jo Bang |Anya Ventura |Fady Joudah
The grassland comes up to the edgeof the road on which I’m standing. A gunshot is easily heard. The grassland exists. My eyes seethat the land is a bannerthe wind holds up. The ground turnsunder and around and then becomesa densely forested park wherethe trees are all lying on their sides. After the hurricane came throughI couldn’t find my way out. kept coming back like a weavingI took out at night. By noon,it was yesterday again—a sketchbarely held together by a stitchor two.
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Sep 5, 2023 | 
lithub.com | Mary Jo Bang
for Lucie Brock-BroidoThe transient snow in a shaken globe was making me thinkof the Moscovian dome, below which,in a small private room called a cubiculum, I’d readthey had buried an empress’s golden hair. After she’d died, after “they inquired eagerlyfor the tsarina, but she was nowhere to be found.”—From the Remotest Periods to the Present Time. Snow becomes rain under the overhead rainforestshowerhead—drop by imbecilic drop drippingonto a broken stone floor.
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Aug 22, 2023 | 
pshares.org | Carl Phillips |James Carroll |David Baker |Mary Jo Bang
The Spring 2003 issue of Ploughshares, guest-edited by Carl Phillips. Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, is guest-edited serially by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.
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Aug 14, 2023 | 
newyorker.com | Mary Jo Bang
In scene two, silence is a sleeve, I’m an arm in it. In an outdated Hollywood magazine, I found a photoof someone wearing my hair. How can that be? Now I can’t stop thinking about the synaptic sparksover which no one has any control. Or, they have somecontrol but not enough to count on in a crisis. I’m making sense all the time of all the senseless endings. A day is as long as the time it takesfor the mind to consider life and death countless times.
