Welcome readers!
We’re happy to introduce Mark Saba, our selection for May’s Poetry at Ephemera. Thanks to Mark and everyone who submitted! If you’d like to participate, we will be fielding submissions each month to publish one poem per issue from the same poet for the month. Each poet receives a $200 honorarium. For full rules and more info please see our designated post about Poetry at Ephemera. You can also submit via the button:
Introducing, Mark Saba!
Writer Bio
Mark Saba, a native of Pittsburgh, is the author of poetry books Flowers in the Dark and Calling the Names as well as Ghost Tracks: Stories of Pittsburgh Past and other works of poetry and fiction. His work has appeared widely in literary magazines around the U.S. and abroad. A graduate of Wesleyan University (B.A.) and Hollins College (M.A.), he is also a painter, and recently retired from Yale University as a medical illustrator and graphic designer. Please see marksabawriter.com.
Artist Statement
I began writing as an undergraduate student at Wesleyan University under the tutelage of Annie Dillard. At first I concentrated on fiction, but she encouraged me to write poetry as well. For the past 40 years I have written both, as well as creative nonfiction. I also have an extensive background in art and continue to paint with oils. But everything I create is a poem. I approach each new work with a feeling and let that intuition guide through to its completion. I look for the essence of what I am trying to say, or paint; every instance results in something unique and surprising. I’ve had a full-time job as a medical illustrator, married, and had two children, all of which have contributed to my inspiration as a creator. In order to create something beautiful you have to cultivate a beautiful life—not an easy life, but one full of highs and lows. Everything you experience that will be reflected in your poetry.
Poems
Each issue of Ephemera spanning the month of April will feature one poem from Mark Saba. After each issue drops, the poem from that issue will then appear here as well. This post will remain on our Substack, free to view, for the year.
Poem 1 of 4
Conscious
Listen: a raptor’s call
from the trees. It bristles
the blood—a gargled coo
down the spine.In my dreams I have murdered
then buried the soiled body parts.
I awaken smelling blood
as I blow my nose.It’s everywhere: our past.
Somewhere, some one of us—family—
has done this. We carry the memory
in our eyes, unleash instinctunder government orders. I know
I have murdered says the dream.
I know it’s true. Where has my blood
roamed? Sardinia? Mongolia? Lebanon?I smell the past about me, hanging
in the trees, dug under my garden.
Body parts are buried there. I see them
by my ancestors’ eyes.What one of us has done
will find us, one by one.
Poem 2 of 4
Fossil Flowers
So, we’ve finally uncovered you
hiding in plain sight
for a hundred millennia.Now we can photograph you
write poems about you
paint your portraits.
It’s no longer possible for you
to live in anonymity.
We now assume responsibility
for your looks, the way you
dandied yourself up
in a world of muted colorto say nothing of your long struggle
to become. It took fire
to preserve you, ashes
to make your bed.
But we will never know
the glory you feltas you lifted your head one morning
and felt the sun, as you stood
proudly among others
who would greet you
with a windborne kiss
and together you would conquera sterile past.
Poem 3 of 4
The Great Escape
The ocean waves—crest and trough—
ambling through a physics amplitude
roar in soft echo
and refuse to be named.I heard them once in childhood,
imagined whole fleets of adventure
and the cold depths of wonder
before I learned the chemistryof water, the salinity of our bodies
and ancestry of sand. I heard
the roundness of our globe,
the trade winds of history
so etched into textbooks.Now I've given up on learning
the hows and whys of everything.
The waves roll back, and I go
with them, back to a time
that was once mine, a music
of inception, not discovery,
a willingness to see, at last,
the beginning of all things.
Poem 4 of 4
A New Autumn
I have been eating trees
with my eyes, ears, and nose.Their colors soften
a bitter landscapecreating a welcome amnesia—
days when I gobbled them upin paint, words, or dreams.
But trees remained outsideof me, petrified by my plan.
I killed them one by one.Now I know their leaves
must shake, rattle, and fallwhether I note them or not.
Whether my dreams give them back
or I digest them into oblivion.