Two Poems by Marianne Szlyk

Under Construction

Without their leaves, trees look like scaffolding.
Naked bushes become barbed wire fences.
The only colors are empty wrappers caught in the wind.

Men in masks disassemble the long-vacant house.
The front yard fills
with broken plaster and boards,
with window frames and glass.
Papers blossom like mold.



Soon

The grass will be green, first pale, then darker.

The bushes will bristle with waxy thorns,
forsythia’s yellow dots and dashes against the papery sky.

Crocuses will snap up in purple and white. Hyacinths
and lilacs will follow,
their sweetness infusing the wind.

A larger house,
one with bamboo floors, a sunken hot tub,
and walls the color of abalone flesh,
will rise from the ruins.

Marianne Szlyk is an associate professor of English at Montgomery College, Rockville as well as an associate editor at the Potomac Review. Her poems have been published in the Antigonish Review, the Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Atrium, Eos: The Creative Context, and Aberration Labyrinth. Other poems will appear in the Ishaan Literary Review and the Blue Hour Magazine.