"A Certain Place" by Betsy Martin

A Certain Place

About Russian cake, 
less sweet,  

but much richer, 
with many layers,  

my friend reminisces; 
of her ancestors, 

murdered, tossed in a pit, 
she says little. 

“Ya idú v odnó mésto,” she smiles, 
I’m going to a certain place. 

We’re in a café having tea, 
and that’s what women would say, 

a delicate phrase, such as 
I have to powder my nose. 

My eyes follow her down a corridor 
to a land where myth and fact mingle. 

She opens a door, 
the light goes on, and there’s mirror over the sink. 

In it a moon, dreamy and powdery, 
with shadows under the eyes. 

Betsy Martin

Betsy Martin’s chapbook, Whale’s Eye, was published by Presa Press in June 2019. Her poem “To Missoula” was nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, The Briar Cliff Review, California Quarterly, Cloudbank, Crack the Spine, Diverse Voices Quarterly (Best of the Net nomination), Dunes Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Juked, The Lake Poetry, Louisville Review, The MacGuffin, Midwest Quarterly, Pennsylvania English, The Round, Signal Mountain Review, Slab, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, THINK, Third Wednesday, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Wrath-Bearing Tree and others. She worked for many years at Skinner House Books in Boston. She has advanced degrees in Russian language and literature and lived in Moscow, studying at the Pushkin Institute during the exciting transitional period of glasnost. She is also a visual artist.

Headshot: Betsy Martin

Photo Credit: Staff