Katie Manning specializes in poetry and women’s literature, with intersecting interests in the areas of linguistics, Romantic and Victorian literature, and contemporary American literature. Her creative work has been published in Fiction Southeast, New Letters, PANK, Poet Lore, Relief, and So to Speak, among other journals and anthologies, and she is a rotating editor for Fickle Muses: an online journal of myth and legend.
Signs
of Life
Little alien planet,
I’ve got you
surrounded.
I have scanned
your surface
for life and see
you have one
being—bloblike,
almost human.
So, of course,
the question
remains: Do you
come in peace,
or have you
come to tear me
to pieces?
*First published in The Mom Egg, 2011.
Wendy Lady
after J. M. Barrie
My children are almost
my age.
When I fly
they believe I am a bird.
They built a house
just for me, but I still
visit them
underground
in the sky.
At night
I tuck them into my stories.
I arrange them all
neatly—
with Mermaids
and Pirates—
where they are always
about to die,
where they are safe
from growing up.
I leave
the windows open
so they can escape.
I leave the windows open
to catch them.
*Published in Literary Mama, 2011.
Little alien planet,
I’ve got you
surrounded.
I have scanned
your surface
for life and see
you have one
being—bloblike,
almost human.
So, of course,
the question
remains: Do you
come in peace,
or have you
come to tear me
to pieces?
*First published in The Mom Egg, 2011.
Wendy Lady
after J. M. Barrie
My children are almost
my age.
When I fly
they believe I am a bird.
They built a house
just for me, but I still
visit them
underground
in the sky.
At night
I tuck them into my stories.
I arrange them all
neatly—
with Mermaids
and Pirates—
where they are always
about to die,
where they are safe
from growing up.
I leave
the windows open
so they can escape.
I leave the windows open
to catch them.
*Published in Literary Mama, 2011.
© 2013
Katie Manning
Katie Manning was a Featured Poet who read her poetry at the November 2013 Second Sunday Poetry Series
Katie Manning was a Featured Poet who read her poetry at the November 2013 Second Sunday Poetry Series