Muddy-Fingered Midnights: poems from the bright days and dark nights of the soul

By Laurel Garver

This thirty-poem collection is an eclectic mix of light and dark, playful and spiritual, lyric and narrative free verse. In an intricate dance of sound play, it explores how our perceptions shape our interactions with the world. Here child heroes emerge on playgrounds and in chicken coops, teens grapple with grief and taste first love, adults waver between isolation and engaged connection. It is a book about creative life, our capacity to wound and heal, and the unlikely places we find love, beauty, and grace.

“In Muddy-Fingered Midnights, Garver seamlessly integrates unpredictable rhyme and alliteration to undergird the themes and strange beauty of these poems. The collection explores moments of cowardice and melting purity, ‘my only fruit / a cool ooze / that bubbles up / on blistering days,’ yet holds strongly onto faith as much as ‘Yankee girl grit.’ Even in dark times that are ‘glassy with misery,’ there’s a hidden reflection in the pane: hope.”

—Jessica Bell, co-founder of Vine Leaves Literary Journal and author of Fabric, Twisted Velvet Chains, String Bridge and The Book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Laurel Garver
• Release date: Mar 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301778348

Laurel Garver

Laurel Garver holds degrees in English and journalism and earns a living as a magazine editor. She enjoys quirky independent films, word games, British television, and Celtic music. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter. 

Book preview

Morning

Do not say, It is morning, and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.

—Rabindranath Tagore

Gilbert

My friend Gilbert

had the kind of face

you see on milk cartons

on rainy Thursday mornings

that puddle in your brain

without a grain of sense

or purpose but dripdrip drip.

Gil played games

that brought down bullies

to no-longer-larger-than-life lugs

we could look in the eye

and not cringe.

Gil’s games

made emperors of roaches

and elf queens of

bucktoothed, freckled girls

who are good at math

and can’t sing.

Gil’s thoughts

entered me like garlic

and permeated blood

and lungs and skin,

reeking and lusty of life,

lingering in the pores

for days.

commuter world

i

blurred sun fog-burns

breeze-bumped wires sway

heels crick cement stairs

shuffle-slide passengers

plaintive wait, fearing late

rails ring, lights shine

collective sigh from skirts,

suits, pneumatic brakes

bodies surge toward metal steps

commuters herd to windowed world

ii

silver snake swaying takes

slithered path through urban blight:

cracked brick, splintered glass

forgotten realm forebears built

on black backs, brogue brawn

ground to dust by dawn to dusk

smoke-choked assembly rush

ragweed taps smack-talk

bandana boys bright-sprayed

to catch averted eyes

and show the ghosts of us to come

Acies *

Across the corridor

from our meek bovines,

the hand-licking

pups with hooves,

lay the battlefield.

Avian territory.

One never approached

the paltry poultry unarmored.

Tall, thick boots,

sturdy hood,

muffler even in summer

gave slender protection

from their most

wicked weapons.

Those bullet-like

beaks batter

shin and shank.

Talons tear hair,

flay flesh.

Crisp pinions

score skin.

Toxic droppings

strangle and gag,

lunge for the lungs

like mustard gas.

In