Lisa Meserole
Butterfly-throated
Butterflies stomached in enclosure,
trapped in a small flowered world
by two sets of flaps,
one monarch always escapes
through sphincters and tunnels between
to fly about the head.
A long-distance migrant
has something to say, but what –
inside it burns and closes the throat.
Hermes travels to and from the underworld
with his winged feet – messenger of the gods.
Mercury gone retrograde flying to meet the Sun,
in Aries, the throat warrior is in reflux.
Which way to open, what to digest,
what and how to set the winged voice free?
Bio
Lisa Meserole teaches music and movement to young children in Connecticut. Her poems have appeared in various journals, including Connecticut River Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Earth's Daughters, and Shot Glass Journal. In 2017, she was an Edwin Way Teale Writer-In-Residence at Trail Wood, sponsored by the Connecticut Audubon Society, and a participant at Stowe Story Labs in Stowe, Vermont for her screenplay entitled The Jazz Bird, about a young mockingbird who searches for the musical soulmate of his ancestors.