SD Poets You Should Know: Marcella Remund

Marcella Remund, who lives in Vermillion and teaches at USD, has been writing poems for years but only recently begun publishing.  Drawing on rich religious and cultural tradition, her poems are concerned with language, feminism, and emotion.  Here’s a poem of hers from the online journal Stirring, from Sundress Publications:RELICI keep this shard in my pocket,cut glass to remind me of you,how you came near once,dim blue light refractedin a broken cup I refused,rapt in my own skin,my eyes unfocused or closed,and how I felt you hold on,tenuous grasp on whateverfooting I would spare you,etching yourself in me,and how the flutter of yousent a spark up my spine,tripped me to sudden weepingor laughter, and how you leftthen, a vapor trail acrossthe dotted Milky Way,and how sometimes in sleep I watchyour eyes open, know you knowI couldn't risk your soft breath,and so I carry on as if you'd nevercome, though deep in my pocketI finger blue glass knowingit will split the skin like birth,knowing blood will soak the seams,knowing you are the pale lightof a minor constellation now,or the impulse insomeone else's sudden smile.I finger blue glass and feelthe bite of you. It leaves a bruiselike an open blue eye.This poem is addressed to a “you” who’s never named, except as pronoun, and yet the imagery hints at who that you might be—the “blue glass” could “split the skin like birth,” the you “came near” but didn’t show up, the you was “etch[ed]” in the speaker, though the you “left / then, a vapor trail.”  The speaker comes away “bruise[d].”  To me, this imagery hints that the you was a baby who wasn’t born, either as miscarriage or termination—the speaker of this poem laments that, though she knows she couldn’t “risk” the you, she was too “rapt in [her] own skin.”  The world is complicated—something can happen that is both necessary and laden with regret, and the poetry of Marcella Remund is always concerned with the complexity of emotion and the complexity of thought.Featured image by Sarah R under the creative commons license on Flickr. Post by Barbara Duffy.Read about more South Dakota Poets.