Three Lies and a Truth

Gail Martin

We live in a world where some lies sinkto their knees in the bottomland. Othersunsheathe wings, lift and ferry their seeds, driftup like the down of angels. My mother believedselling vacuum cleaners and eternal salvationwere both honorable. I agree. It doesn't matterif you're slicing limes for your fancy gin or tossingthe rinds under the porch to ward off feral cats,you can still sever what you need the most.These days, it's the need that interests me.Not once have I told the kind of lie that flew away.Like pine sap on fingers, mine have fused and clung,tacky, awkward. And sometimes you just don't knowwhat you don't know. For years I said I was in lovewith windows but it turned out what I loved was light.To be honest, I'm in it for the tomatoes and the flowers.I can't go on harvesting carrots in the rain forever.Where the road forks right toward the meaning of lifeand left toward cheese and crackers, I go left. Andin the end we will die like the cedars, wet, with cold feet.

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Gail Martin’s third collection, Disappearing Queen won the Two Sylvias Press Wilder prize in 2021. Begin Empty-Handed won the Perugia Press Poetry prize in 2013 and was winner of the Housatonic Book Award for Poetry. The Hourglass Heart (New Issues Prose and Poetry), was published in 2003. Martin works as a psychotherapist in Kalamazoo, MI.

Spring 2022

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Louisiana State University

Co-Editor & Poetry Editor
Jessica Faust

The Southern Review is one of the nation’s premiere literary journals. Hailed by Time as “superior to any other journal in the English language,” we have made literary history since our founding in 1935. We publish a diverse array of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by the country’s—and the world’s—most respected contemporary writers.

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