Mary Ellen Talley
Gravity
One wants to say give up
as Sisyphus keeps pushing the boulder,
leaning torso into stone, straining,
straining the backs of their calves,
bruising the nipples of their chest, scraping
their left cheek and feeling
each small bone of their nose
fracture from the pressure of the uphill climb.
But we don’t say it
and they won’t listen anyway
as now hearing the thrum
of their heart in their ears,
a small bird
that refuses to stop singing.
—Submitted on 03/27/2020
Mary Ellen Talley’s poems and reviews have appeared in Raven Chronicles, Flatbush Review, Banshee, MORIA, Compulsive Reader, Crab Creek Review, Sugar House Review, Colorado Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies including All We Can Hold: Poems of Motherhood (Sage Hill Press, 2016), edited by Elise Gregory, Emily Gwinn, Kaleen McCandless, Kate Maude, and Laura Walker; and Ice Cream Poems: Reflections on Life with Ice Cream (World Enough Writers, 2017), edited by
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