"Georgia, Lake George, 1907" by Tara Hart

Georgia, Lake George, 1907

You see what became of me:

cross, stripped skull, giant desert flower.

But at twenty I played a summer east of Tongue Mountain.

I read pulp fiction, did not tell these boys about those.

I watched the water at night, seeing in a red then green glowing prow my own

turning to wonder:

just how much light and little lake

would it take

to bleach me

beyond the dark boats tugging this sodden body,

to rise

to the level of

my perfect

white

bones?

Tara Hart

Tara Hart, PhD, was awarded a Pushcart Prize for Poetry in 2011 from the publication of "Patronized" in Little Patuxent Review. She has a chapbook entitled The Colors of Absence and several poems in the anthology to linger on hot coals: collected poetic works from grieving women writers. Other poems have appeared in journals such as TriQuarterly, Welter, and The Muse. She is a Professor of English, Arts & Humanities; Department Chair of Humanities; and the Coordinator of Creative Writing at Howard Community College in Maryland, and is Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of HoCoPoLitSo (the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society). She has served as a host of HoCoPoLitSo’s TV show The Writing Life in “A Literary Gathering of Women: The Craft of Writing” and “A Literary Gathering of Women: Exploring Themes in Literature.” Her chapter, “Still Points: Mary Austin’s Compositions and Explanations,” from the dissertation Tender Horizons: The American Landscapes of Austin and Stein, is published in Exploring Lost Borders: Critical Essays on Mary Austin (University of Nevada Press).

Headshot: Tara Hart

Photo Credit: Staff