I kept a picture of Stalin by our bed.My wife set it face down when we made love.I closed my eyes and thought about the deadgossiping on the long train to Lvov,a woman smoking with a blindfold onagainst a tree in thick November snow,and when I blinked it was already dawn;Tchaikovsky brooded on the radio.For years that portrait held us in its gaze.Our mirror was the polish of a boot,wind in the cellar merely empty praise,the years a dead tree rotten to the root.Most nights we quarreled over a cigar—how every revolution leaves its ash!—and saw above the roofs one grimy stardangling like a crumb from night’s mustache.
The Marriage
Morri Creech
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Copyright © 2025 by Morri Creech.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
No. 44 Winter 2025
Washington, Pennsylvania
Washington & Jefferson College
Editor-in-Chief / Executive Director
George David Clark
Managing Editor
Elisabeth Clark
Printed twice a year (in July and December) and distributed internationally with subscribers in over twenty countries, each issue includes 32 shorter poems. This minimalist focus has fostered an intimate and intensive reading experience since 2002, when Deborah Ager and John Poch founded the journal as an alternative to larger and less-selective literary magazines.
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