Poetry By Megan Denese Mealor

Megan Denese Mealor has been writing her entire life. Language has always been a confidant and conduit to be counted upon in both her best and worst of times. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, most recently Literally Stories, A Long Story Short, and The Scarlet Leaf Review. She lives in Jacksonville, Florida with her partner and son. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder at fifteen, Megan hopes to inspire those suffering with mental illness and to bring recognition to the importance of the arts as potent medicine.

Manic Blues

i should stop hiding

behind futile doggerel

alleviating icy inclinations

with morsels of discord

leaving my fragility

stripped of all eruptions

(who are we without

our wieldy eruptions?)

we are wendigos

breathing in

our own black deaths

that’s who

i never stop speaking

soon enough to fill

these jilted echoes.

do i, dearest dust

dearest desk?

dreaming is like sowing rotten roots

Poet Megan Denese Mealor

A Makeshift Sky

no allegory left

in the seeping spoilage

of your ramshackle grin

rusty vibrissa scour

no bee sting promise

for your star-washed cities

or smoking cedar bridges

shuffling the dawn

no bird cherry silk

for this swain of anew

your apologue pallor

blackberry eyes bereaving

our retelling, now unsold

Friday in October

The keepsake pond teasing

these bitter lime curtains

twinkles with tenacity:

sleek silvery minnows

greylag goose warming

a clutch of golden eggs

an alabaster ibis contemplates me

through the screened portal

tangled rainbows reflecting

in the shimmering breeze

climbing fern unleashing

lawless shade for keystone turtles

peeping past feathery veronica

to imbibe the lounging sun

Circa 1950

i remember you against the feral sepia tree

the sunset dazed around you

leaves like burnished prisms

eyes a dappled echo

we still meet there

long ago

Green River Eulogy

don’t search for me on neon streets

don’t long for me come christmas eve

just think of soaring honey trees

drifting in the spangled breeze

and you will hear that where i go

has no more rules to ebb or slow

the embers i once called my heart

now a matchstick in the dark