Natalie Marino is a poet and practicing physician. Her work appears in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Little Patuxent Review, Pleiades, Salt Hill, wildness and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook End of Revels (Bottlecap Press, 2023). She lives in California. You can find her online at nataliemarino.com or on Instagram @natalie_marino.
This story is not what it seems. This story is less about men glistening in darkness than a winter followed by another winter. To be in the snow is to know the hunger for bitter fruit, the burn of bourbon going down. When Lot went outside his house he was searching for meaning, for something that dazzled. A satchel of… Read more →
I’d bust this bank. I’d light a flame that flickers everything. Looking out at the water, I wouldn’t be afraid of wolves just because a mansion is more of a person than a person is. I wouldn’t need to find fish to hold heaven in my hand. The night of my wedding I’d throw my red rags away and put… Read more →
Lying in a hospital bed my crooked neck like a flamingo looking for sustenance in sand hiding fear under a rock in the shallow sea,I still don’t know what I am beyond a collector of seaweed and broken shells.I remember lighting all those fires on pools of oil water, bright orange like mid-summer sparklers before blowing them out with my impatience. What is left now is not a metaphor for mother, but… Read more →
There’s so much sick on these walls, even after they painted them over in pacific green. I couldn’t get rid of the dead whales’ bones in bedside drawers, so I still hold on tight to Gideon’s book before tumors are cut into shapes of flowers, left as monster seeds in silver bins. Standing in a paper blue coatI stare at my styrofoam coffee cup to avoid the childrenlooking from behind waiting room… Read more →