Majorie Manwaring lives in Seattle, where she is a freelance writer and editor, teacher, and an editor for the online poetry and art journal the DMQ Review. Her chapbook Magic Word was published by Pudding House Publications in 2007 and her first full-length poetry collection is due out from Mayapple Press in early 2013.

What Ignites

Only the sound of your teeth as they snick
the nut meat of one salted pistachio
after another. Weary of August’s
soft-fleshed fruit, you long for cold’s sharp claw to
scratch you awake. Anticipate harvest’s
fresh-gleaned grain, as if swallowing kernel,
husk, might grow something new inside (such grand
thoughts accumulate when leaves start to curl).
You’ll watch pumpkins on the fence—faces blend
into low-slanting sun, mouths carved open—
frozen mid-word. Offer up horse chestnuts,
letters from ghosts, feathers of sin to candle-
flame tongues. Praise what ignites, dissipates. Plant
seeds of pomegranate in mind’s blank dusk.