Psyche Marks

Psyche Marks

poetry and other word-creatures

About Psyche Marks

Psyche is a tired, middle-aged, queer and disabled single mom who wrangles poetry out of cracks in the sidewalk of her life. She is socially awkward and occasionally funny. She doesn’t have a long list of credentials; she’s been slaying monsters and chasing wolves from her door for most of her life and hasn’t had time for much else. Nevertheless, she persists, because the muse is sexy and demanding AF.

Psyche studied writing and poetry in high school with a lot of amazing mentors at various writing workshops, and later at Bennington College for two years. She decided to focus on her art for a couple of decades, and graduated from Pratt Institute in 1994 with a BFA in Communication Design. She traveled to West Africa, India, the Caribbean, lived in an ashram, lost the use of her hands, regained the use of her hands, lost them again, mostly lost the use of her legs, volunteered at the Boston Museum of Science for awhile tending plants, cooked lots of vegan food, renovated a rural Western Massachusetts house in psychedelic colors, forgot how to play the piano, re-learned how to play the piano, worked as a traveling sales rep in the natural health industry, did assorted freelance writing, and parented a now-teenage baby dragon who needed to be fed a diet of special dream food and tales of the Golden Fleece. Excuse the run-on sentence. Psyche’s entire life is basically a run-on sentence.

Her name isn’t Psyche like “get psyched,” it’s not a silent “e.” Though she’s psyched that you’re here. Enjoy. Stay awhile. This site is still in flux. More exciting features and social media connections will be added on in time.

Solstice Stillpoint

This is the stillpoint of solstice:
late June, evening. The milltown river,
with its floating candles flickering
as an orange twilight falls.

In this newly minted summer,
porches commune with their rocking chairs
and sunsets unfurl slowly.

My inventory of the longest day
reveals a stasis of bliss
settling inside my core
like a reservoir
when hope is complete:…

The Things Trees Say

Today I forgot I need walls.
I had to park my car
and walk to the post office.
I left my agoraphobia
behind in the hot back seat,
balled up with my sweatshirts
when I grabbed my cane.

Google lied. I thought it was closer.
One more block;
one more block.
My knees parse the distance…

Letter to My Daughter

I’m sorry for all the things I taught you
when I was still learning to be myself.

I’m sorry for all you learned inside me,
the monologues I baptized your splitting cells with
on long walks home from the train
after working on my feet all day
or on the way to the laundromat,
pushing the cart over packed snow—
at the sink, on my knees, at the stove,
hanging the rags to dry; and finally, in dreams—
once I felt I’d earned the right to sleep.

I’m sorry for the way I said it was,
the things I said we do for love.
I said it like a prayer, while getting him tea
in the hours I didn’t need to be awake in.
This is how we love…

Chalk Circle

…There is no disgrace
in surrendering
to passion
as long as you remember
to plan it:
with a steady conscience,
cast your libations
to quench the thirsty dead
and honor the thousand invisibles:

you must always remember
the thousand demons that sneak
into the unseen midst
between eyes and electric brain,
knotted knuckle-fists
and through the gaps
between
 your thousand wandering kisses
erupting in violets
over skin’s borderless terrain,
blooming from a thousand open pores—…

Baby Dragon

…She learned to fly by climbing the walls
and sometimes burnt the curtains
just by breathing.
She chatted with herself
and vibrated like an electron.
Drawings poured from her restless mind
over every freshly painted surface.
She always asked “why,”
and the reasons never satisfied her…

Magic Eye

“…Yesterday you told me about the way
forestry affects your mind:
hunting poison ivy, leaves of three
with greater poisons in hand,
your mind twists and grows
into moving shapes, tesselations
of trinities, hidden in the brush
like a Magic Eye painting.
The movement of growing things,
the taste of green gets under your skin…”

Newfoundland

“…Come with me, when the coast is clear,
to the Gideon’s call of foghorns
and the rush of wind in your russet hair.
I want to see the cold playing your skin
and draw maps of the constellations
of your freckles. I want to discover
the highways and fire roads in you,
your back country, the icebergs that break ships
and the lounging sunlit seals…”

Golden Envelope

“I’ve got a golden envelope
in my back pocket
I’m careful not to crush it,
smooth its edges before I sit

every day I slip things in it for you:
the scent of grapes,
soft things that yawn
green beanstalk money
last night’s dreams

and while I sleep, the gifts awaken
into their own mischief, alive
with the multiplying alchemy of you—…”

Sheet Music (for Scott Joplin)

“The secret of leaving things behind
isn’t names
branding the flanks of the world,
it’s footsteps.
It’s not the buildings they burn,
It’s the songs we hum
while we work.
It’s all the things that don’t make book.
Rain gnaws the edges of my small-town street,
baring cobblestone teeth.
Forgotten dance steps litter the dirt
in layers under the grocery store,
and I’m thinking about legacies
and the thin halocline
between living and dying.
Where am I on this river? How much time
before the salt trickles in,
pulling me home to the ocean?…”

Random YouTube Ad Mashup After Watching Koyaanisquatsi at 4am

“Meet the real woman behind the voice of Siri.
My computer’s possessed!
Don’t believe me? Ask the dishes.

You’re not a dish, you’re a man.
Can I show you some really disturbing math?
There’s never been a better time than now to focus.

Being a person is complicated.
Hey there, got a little misfit inside of you?
Do you want more clarity and empathy?
There are situations when you need a serious power supply…”

A Thanksgiving

“…Tonight I’m connecting the stars on my own
in a house the color of midnight.
I was experimenting with electricity
and found a rip in the galaxy—
an open circuit, a breach in polarity
where the mysteries of trinities glow

Is it too much just to be happy?
I don’t need to invent the microwave
or write a symphony.
I just want the simple pleasures
of photosynthesis.
I’m waiting, and waiting is a sentient life-form
you can feed snacks…”

A Harder Rain (Bob Dylan Cento)

Oh, what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
In your sleep, listen
to the hum of latent sunrise—
the crickets of dawn receding
as dreams trickle
down the celestial bolus
like fireflies into your open veins.

Nebulas strain
against the edges of blackout curtains.
The entire universe is trying to trespass
with all its available light,
and you’ve mistaken it for a burglar.
Mars is insistent: this isn’t a joke.
Will the sound of glass breaking awaken you?…”

Riding with Death and an Accordion

(Ekphrastic homage to Jean-Michel Basquiat, with borrowed words)

Why
do these accordion players keep playing
in the middle of the street
to incoming traffic?

Bellows spread open,
taped and stitched, dissected;
parting a red sea of love notes
over and over, purses bloated with life,
pockets of coins scattering
from a currency that wasn’t current,
change that didn’t register
until the impact finally hit.

Shelter in Place

Before the sun rises, I let his shadow hold me.
Dawn threatens the blackout curtains.
Another day waiting, another sun and moon
giving way to more empty rooms
in the dayless patchwork of quarantine.

I remember how he is when his words are flesh
and his voice isn’t saved up in a jar:

Apple Spice Helix

It’s Sunday, September:
after storms, a high-contrast day 
so bright I can see the future
glowing like the variegated orbs of apples
in this barn, each in its wooden bowl
awaiting transmutation
into tastes of permanence.
The cider press extracts elixirs
and ferments liquors while donuts fry,
pies bake, sauces simmer.

The hurricanes passed.
You were here with me,
like you’ve been through them all
under the waves as my towns submerged…

Inception

…I feel her pushing against my rocks,
evaluating the surface.
I feel the tug of her roots descending,
cotyledon bursting, Kermit-green:
a heart-shaped inquiry
I can’t help but water.

What will they bring? Will this be a quick harvest,
a crop of radishes—lunch for the skunks,
or the start of a garden?
It’s hard to say, always. I lie under the covers,
trembling, osmotic—thinking of the other beginnings,
these inceptions I didn’t expect.
I turn over the soil, remembering them all.
I’m strangely calm, like always; my membrane thins
and I paint my cortex with the colors of her skin…

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