Natalie Marino is a poet, physician, and mother. Her work appears in Barren Magazine, Literary Mama, Moria Online, and elsewhere. She lives in Thousand Oaks, California with her husband and two daughters.
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 →