Phiolomela / Tara Mae Mulroy

  dancing girl press, 2014$7.00  Tara Mae Mulroy is a former Managing Editor and Poetry Editor of The Pinch Literary Journal and an alum of the MFA program in poetry at the University of Memphis. Her work has appeared recently in Bayou Magazine, Cutbank, Third Coast, and others. The Swamp Wife I clean a bullfrog of its eyes, work the legs until the muscle surrenders. Love is knowing another’s breaking point. The gypsy moths don’t know: they strip the spruces and pines, kill them naked. I know love is about avoiding. I let my husband roost in a ditch of booze piss. The last time we talked he told me he dreamed his mouth kept filling with my tears. I don’t know if it was a bear that ate the breath behind my ribs last night. If it was a coon scraped down to scalp and spine. I make my bed by the light of the star- lepered sky, name the gators lullabying the bank.