Three Poems
Maggs Vibo (she/her) is an artist and war veteran from Richmond, Virginia. She has art forthcoming at Icefloe Press and The Folklore Podcast. She is published at The Babel Tower Notice Board, Ang(st) Zine and Poem Atlas. Her war poetry is in e-anthologies with O-Dark-Thirty and Oxford Brookes. She tweets @maggsvibo and her website is poemythology.com
Tōkaidō
Bridge over the Yui River
like a Magpie bridge
or that time
wide-eyed
when my sister and I
crossed the Millennium or
on the Potterfield of Richmond
when they ran from fire
engulfing the city in 65'
to flee with Lee
So much chaos in woeful times
Like now
But I see
mounds in the distance
memories of Ocmulgee in Macon,
the Bubbles at Acadia and
neolithic passageways of Knowth
Our forebears forged ahead and beat
any dread of disease, plague, quarantine and horrors of war
They bore the brunt of uncertainty
just as we do today
Holding memories of traveling
in our minds during
the passage of our worries
A Healing of Nations
A silver fox flicks his tail cautioning her over the white doe approaches
as if a ghost of the battlefield she stands transfixed at the rim of
The Crater
a warrior when wheat fields washed over these lands
peering into that horrid pit knowing what transpired in it one intense summer morn
smoke swirls and silhouettes the Chippewa covering their faces
chanting a death song
chanting a death song
chanting a death song
the warrior’s soul must bleed then leave
this hole
but not without first offering energy back to her womb
so, she consumes through the oral tradition watering the land
with her weeping
A faint flash at the edge of the woods whispers his new walkabout
he leaves her to heal and ever so still she lingers in the lowlands
Within these pockmarked fields scars reveal our battles and wounds that made
a nation
A Star-Spangled Farewell
He grabs a net
to catch
a great spangled fritillary
flapping wings
beat against a web
a snarer of dreams
and terrors
trapped
exposing black flint
armor
wears a mask
during a dance
from another era
when a virus
wiped us out
tears sparkling
lightning flashes
fighting and tossing flesh
into a pyre
thunderous roaring
soaring feathers glide
amongst the veil
