about the author
Erica Maria Litz’s first poetry book, Lightning Forest, Lava Root, was published by Plain View Press in 2009. Her
poems have appeared in the journals The Superstition Review, Brink Magazine, Oranges & Sardines, Hispanic Culture
Review, Literary Mama, Americanisado, Moondance, The Caribbean Writer and quiet Shorts. Ms. Litz graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University in 2002. She is an Adjunct English Faculty at Paradise Valley Community College and is a Poetry Mentor with PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program.
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Sweet Messes Under the Stars
Erica Maria Litz
Tonight she’ll make them chocolate cupcakes, forget their father’s sake
And watch two faces turn to sweet messes under the stars.
She’ll light up a maduro puro, listen to “Crabs in the Skillet,”
And the bamboo rattle in the desert wind.
Her two kids sit at a red plastic table from the dollar store
And watch her dance the yard, smoke
Caressing the sky well beyond the back fence to the moon,
Her feet afire with their delight.