Martha McCollough
—
Many Worlds Theory
In the garden the ranunculus you pick or don't pick doubles its twisty green curl and soft rosette. There are so many better versions of you: prettier (took care of their skin, wore sunblock), smarter, angelic even, and also a flipbook of monsters. One or more are eaten by a bear or bears, one is a forger, at least one is obsessed with conspiracies. Each is a leaf shivering on the tree of yourself, as many as the grains of sand along as many Ganges as there are grains of sand along-sorry-I mean to say a complex rose of alt.yous exiled in the instant of becoming. When you look in a mirror facing a mirror you can never see all the way down. Where does the long inward fall of double and vanish end?
Martha McCollough lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. She has an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute. Her poems have appeared in Radar, Zone 3, Tampa Review, and Salamander, among others. Her chapbook, Grandmother Mountain, was published by Blue Lyra Press in October 2019, and her full-length book of poems, Wolf Hat Iron Shoes, will be out in Spring 2022 from Lily Poetry Review Books.
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