Saundra Rose Maley, American educator, poet, and writer. She teaches at Montgomery College in Maryland. Maley is the author of Solitary Apprenticeship: James Wright and German Poetry; co-editor with Anne Wright of A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright: co-author of The Art of the Footnote: The Intelligent Student’s Guide to the Art and Science of Annotating Texts and The Research Guide for the Digital Age: A New Handbook to Research and writing for the Serious Students. Disappearing Act is Maley’s first book of poems.

To read Maley’s poem “First Blues” click:

First Blues

by Sandra Rose Maley

That summer night
Was hot
Steaming like a crab
Luscious under the shell

Televisions gone bleary
Blinked
In front of men
In undershirts drinking beer

Wives upstairs took showers
Caught
A glimpse of their backs
In hallway mirrors

I sat in the dark
Invisible
On the backporch
Drinking in the night

And it tasted good
So good
Going down

And somebody like me
Blew night through an alto sax
Blew and blew
His cooling breath
His hot cool breath on me—

And I came alive
Glowing
In the dark
Listening like a fool

“First Blues” from Disappearing Act, © 2015 by Saundra Rose Maley – Dryad Press