Featured in Colorado Review

Palimpsest
Featured, PoetryPublished Spring 2014
Flower-bordered river
where I fillet the hyacinths,
a russian doll of places
posing as one place.
Halogen me
at a horse show in Florida
while another juliennes
olives for appetizers.
A doll slipped in another
till all dolls are dull:
versions of me
with whistles for lips
reciting asterisks
in the periodic table.
Collage of the unconscious:
white flowers, lost teeth,
scarecrow with
an aureole of straw,
basilica for everyone’s
best dresses.
I visit the public
museum of clouds,
lithographs of sky
posing as space.
Layers make monsters
as shows the snapdragon.
Memory, you crooked thing
I do to the page.
Maya Catherine Popa’s work appears or is forthcoming in the Kenyon Review, Field, Poetry London, Oxford Poetry, the Rumpus, the Huffington Post, and elsewhere. She was a Clarendon Scholar at Oxford University from 2011–13 and is currently completing an MFA at NYU. She is the editorial fellow at Poets & Writersmagazine and the literary editor of All Hollow magazine.
Image by Colin Smith