Featured Poem / Fall/Winter 2015
The Loss
I awake in the dark
and almost-silence,
my heart having been
eaten by the dream beast.
I touch my empty chest
but cannot feel
the reassuring
tap-and-thump
and for a moment
wonder if I’m dead.
I gasp and swallow air,
so cold it blisters,
stretch and reach to touch
some proof of other life
but find I am alone
alive and living
just without a heart.
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Donna M. Marbach is a poet, an artist, and the owner of the small poetry press Palettes & Quills. Donna
has published non-fiction, fiction and poetry in a variety of anthologies and periodicals. She was formerly
the poetry editor of the national monthly writer’s magazine ByLine, and previously edited for FootHills
Publishing. She co-founded Pensimientos, a bilingual literay magazine by and for middle school students
in Guadalajara, Mexico, and is co-founder and past president of Just Poets, Inc., a non profit organization
dedicated to the celebration of poetry and poets. Her work has appeared or is in Blueline, Hazmat Review,
Homestead Review, Quercus Review, Poetry Quarterly, The MacGuffin, The Red Wheelbarrow, The Pearl,
and more. She has been the featured poet in online poetry journal The Centrftugal Eye and co-authored with
poet Dave Tilley, the chapbook, Twisted Pair, an experiment in collaborative poetry (Foothills, 2010) Recently
she has published a short story in the anthology After Dark (Diversion Press, 2012) and writes a regular column
for the children’s magazine, The Magic Dragon. Donna’s work was also selected for permanent display in the
Poet Walk exhibit of Rochester New York’s Memorial Art Gallery.