Lisa Marie Basile



SUMMERS BEFORE

in this memory my mother wears a white blouse
that ties at the throat.
big, honey hair in summer waves.
& legs they call horses.
she gets high in fields around Milton Lake
under the stars, or street lights.

in this photograph she strains
her midriff to look at the stars
but boys sizzle and she catches fire.

she tells me she never wore a skirt again.
and then she fell in love
with daddy.     she doesn't own the tarot
but a witch once told her about me coming.

it's the summer and she is beaming.
sits on brick stairs & pulls dandelion
feathers.     i was coming,
so the world shook open.

now, she could love a thing like a thing ought to be loved—

without reason,
because it is the right thing to do









Lisa Marie Basile is the author of Andalucia (The Poetry Society of New York) and Triste (Dancing Girl Press), her newest chapbook, war/lock, is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press in 2014. Noctuary Press, run from University of Buffalo, will publish her full-length poetry collection, APOCRYPHAL. Her work can be seen in Best American Poetry, Poets & Artists Magazine, PANK, kill author, Johns Hopkin's The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, decomP, Thrush Poetry Journal, Poetry Crush, La Fovea, and other lit journals. She is the founding editor of Luna Luna Magazine, a destination for women's culture, lifestyle and art. She edits Patasola Press and is a graduate of The New School's MFA program for creative writing.







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