Contact:

emily@emilybensonpoet.com

Bio: 

Emily Benson writes poems of humanity, longing, and nature. A former professional stage manager who now works in digital marketing, she has been writing poetry steadily through it all. She lives in Western New York with her husband, two sons, and their cat. 

Immersion

I turn the hot water on high

While outside the open window

Warm rain falls steadily

Redolent of hyacinth and spruce 

All the good green growing things 

The copper wind chimes sing gently 

And grackles caw to one another 

Like cartoon birds 

In the branches of the cherry tree

Making me smile

Water kisses the brick walk

Water kisses my bare breasts

I close my eyes and waver

Full of dreams 

Of rolling in the grass

My breath short from laughter

Lounging like a little lizard

On rocks hot from the sun 

Barton Creek

Warm as a bath

Pouring over sculpted stone

Heady and headlong 

In a mad rush to the Gulf

I was torn apart and reborn

Aching, old and young and 

Something wholly different 

Slim as a little fish and

I don’t know how to recapture 

That ineffable spark 

Though I begin again and again

I long for a wilder baptism

And swallow the urge

To go run in the rain  

Raw

How can I say that I miss you

When you have stolen my tongue

Placed it in your desk

With the Bakelite pencil I gave you

(Like your dead heroes

You prefer your words in lead)

The theft runs through me

Stinging thrice-severed flesh

Until my breath catches

Because the sky is black

And the snow glitters sharply

Beneath the streetlights

I remember my hands on the wheel

The milk jugs in the trunk

My gloves are off

And a bruise blooms blue

On my knuckles

For no reason I can recall

I’m afraid to take the highway 

The shadowed trees beside it

Too dark and wild

I might run off the road

Become a fox and crunch

The bones of little birds

Raw

Stacking strange hurts

Like a game with razorblades

They fall and cut

And I keep on pushing

Muscle warps and wefts

But nerves broken cannot reconnect

Numb under fingertips

That shouldn’t be out in this cold

Why am I sitting here freezing

On a Tuesday after dark

When there are creatures

That need to feed

When my soul is so hungry

When night spreads like an ink stain

And I am so far from home

Gone

He wonders at this ceaseless longing

The thrill of possibilities in those silent hotel rooms

New eyes behind every door

He can almost feel the road beneath his feet

The staccato white lines of the highway flashing by

As he bends to brush her hair gently from her face

 “Sleep,” he whispers softly

Unwritten songs humming in his head as he tells her

He’ll be there when she wakes

But his heart tenses at the lie

He will be miles gone when she opens her eyes to the dawn

The wanderlust tied to his every nerve compels him

Chances and regrets rise before him like the moon

And he is gone again in the night

Thoughts on a Western Night

Standing before an open window

In this cool-flagged back room

The night breeze fragrant

With wet juniper and piñon

I am suddenly seized by the wild impulse

To run bare skinned through the desert

My lamp shines

Past the bright path of stones

Glistening in the dark

And I lean out

Feeling the warm rain on my shoulders

This night is made for escape

Running free in the damp sand valley below

Eclipse

Grey clouds on a white sky

The black water throwing sparks

Negative image

Retina flare

Strange violence of living things

The ridges of ribs on the deer in the road

My thoughts burrowing

Down mouse trails

In the dark

It’s eat and be eaten