M.M. Garr

So the World Which the Sky Encloses Was Marked Off 

After Ovid

In the gray schoolyard my 
daughter is tiny Her backpack 
from shoulder to kneepit carries her
instead I am inaudible 
Only children make sounds
that coat the canopy Her eyes 
catch me in the arc of an arm She runs

Did you have a good day 
She muffles back Her breath
is quick I missed you

I want her day to be fair
and kind Where the assignments 
of earth are made and we in them 
But this year schoolyards did not 
swell above rooftops or seep 
through open windows All the ecstatic 
sheltered We played
little house instead The only
sound our rage 

I have come now to know: the schoolyard
is urgent There are too many corners
to call it a shape To hide in 
My daughter at four
has already made out the mess 
of too many of us When we are let
loose on the world

I pull the mask 
under my chin to kiss her 
My daughter pulls it back and takes
my hand, pulls me past the gates

M.M. Garr is a poet and the founder of Versal, a small press in Amsterdam, Netherlands. They are the author of two chapbooks, Terrane (MIEL, 2015) and The Preservationist Documents (Pilot Books, 2012). Their writings on the literary economy have been anthologized in Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century (Milkweed Editions, 2016) and Paper Dreams: Writers and Editors on the American Literary Magazine (Atticus Books, 2013). Poems can most recently be found in The Canary and Zone 3. www.meganmgarr.com