Volume 70, Number 2 · Spring 2021
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Of Wilde Marjerome

Lisa Russ Spaar

Of Wilde Marjerome

          “ministered against the swooning of the heart”
					
				Gerard’s Herball, Johnson ed., 1636


In accent austral & thick
with plummet, a balmy arctic

late November fragrance, womanly
but in my love’s voice, its deepest draught

I huffed, a girl, in pantry spice closet
of my ancestors, whetted

concoctions brandied in bowls,
jars of clove, shivery with shadow,

& also many threaded roots, tureened
in jars. My heart was green,

standing there, in secret. As when before you.
Whom I dream to touch, bestrew,

despite & in my agita. In need.  
“A medicine to be licked.” A creed.
Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of over ten books, most recently Orexia: Poems (2017) and the forthcoming Madrigalia: New & Selected Poems (2021). Her honors include a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and an NEH Distinguished Professorship. Her “Second Acts” column on second books of poetry is a regular feature at the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is professor and director of creative writing at the University of Virginia.