Morgan Liphart
Georgia O’Keeffe spends six months of the year in New York
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City. A trade. Quiet compromise.
From Suite 3003 she works in charcoal.
Windows. Right angles. Entire worlds born
from black. Inside the tallest hotel ever stacked
into sky in 1925. Did she feel it too?
They forgot to build stairs.
What reds and peaches did we miss
because she left her desert?
What screaming blues?
A bobcat spine found in the sand.
A study on the way first light moves over thistle.
What museum plaques will stay blank?
How many women before, since
have put down their brush
to take a man’s open palm
and found themselves, later, lost?
When she shut her eyes in the bath
and sank back into the warm belly of it,
I know she could still feel New Mexico.
She could still taste the tangerine rise of it.
Right there, I know she could still see the trees.
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You want to know my name and I tell you
After Durga
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to eat hot stones. Lick an arrow point.
You want to know my name and I tell you
about my women, the tender ones, and the bruises
you make like boys carve trees to prove their own existence.
My women, more heart than body. My women,
who sleep and dream, but I have no use for night.
I want to see you when you bleed.
You come for my women, I come on a tiger.
Eight hands. Eight weapons and maybe I’ll let you choose.
Don’t look at her. Look at me.
You want to love me? You want to hurt me?
You want to call it God? Come closer.
I’ll be the sweetest wine. The tightest bud.
The softest hands you’ve ever known
because the knife is between my teeth.
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Morgan Liphart’s work has appeared in anthologies and journals across the US, Canada, Italy, Sweden, Japan, England, and Scotland, such as Oxford University Press’ Literary Imagination, Poetry Scotland, and The Asahi Shimbun. Her first chapbook, Barefoot and Running, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. She is the host of the writing podcast The Quiet Alchemist, and the teacher of Poetry Masterclass: Writing and Publishing Powerful Poetry in Journals and Magazines.