Water plays its cards. You
will go under,
but this is privileged
information. Your eyes frozen
in the lake glitter
like sin. Mornings I wake
wanting to descend
and possess you, to be captured
and strip-searched
until nothing is left
to be accepted or understood
but pure light
sliced thin as a host.
I call the lake
home and never go back,
mistress of paradox.
I enter the closest thing
to a dark wood.
Author of MOON AND MERCURY (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 1990) and a chapbook, TROUBLED BY AN ANGEL (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1997), Elisabeth Murawski is a native of Chicago but has lived in the DC area since 1960. She works as a training specialist for the U.S. Census Bureau and has served as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University Washington Center and the University of Virginia Falls Church Center. She has received four grants from The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, NM and a partial fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center.
Publications include: THE YALE REVIEW, THE DUBLINER, THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW, GRAND STREET, DOUBLETAKE, FIELD, THE LITERARY REVIEW, CRAZYHORSE, THE AMERICAN VOICE, AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW, POETRY NORTHWEST, THE OHIO REVIEW, SHENANDOAH, et al.