Surfaces
Take possession
of the blanket, the feel
of it, the smooth
and the lean, the lying
down of it, the way it
imitates the body.
This is the promise
I keep—to rest on the
bed under moonlight.
Yet so many cats
knead the surfaces;
their paws tap-dance,
wishing for food.
The dark summer
storm rips across
the bed, rumpling
covers like waves,
whitecaps against
each other.
Cats’ paws skim
the sheets as if
called by a higher spirit.
Their willowy bodies
curl together in sleep.
This selection comes from the book, Cracked Piano, available from CavanKerry. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Sarah Ghoshal.
Margo Taft Stever’s poetry collections include Cracked Piano (CavanKerry Press, 2019); Ghost Moose (Kattywompus Press, 2019); The Lunatic Ball (Kattywompus Press, 2015); The Hudson Line (Main Street Rag, 2012); Frozen Spring (Mid-List Press First Series Award, 2002) and Reading the Night Sky (Riverstone Press Poetry Chapbook Competition, 1996). She co-authored Looking East: William Howard Taft and the 1905 U.S. Diplomatic Mission to China (Zhejiang University Press, 2012). Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, including Verse Daily; Prairie Schooner; Connecticut Review; “poem-a-day” on poets.org, Academy of American Poets; Cincinnati Review; upstreet; Plume; and Salamander. She is founder of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and founding and current co-editor of Slapering Hol Press. She lives in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
Sarah Ghoshal’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Arsenic Lobster, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Empty Mirror, Red Savina Review and Broad! Magazine, among others. Her chapbook, Changing the Grid, is available from Finishing Line Press. She earned her MFA from Long Island University and teaches at Montclair State University. Sarah lives in New Jersey with her husband, her ten month old daughter and her dog Comet, who flies through the air with the greatest of ease.
