Eric Raanan Fischman

It doesn’t have to happen in a day.
Slowly clouds disperse, the snow melts.
Tomorrow brings a sun you’ve never seen.
The Earth begs for feet to touch its dirt.

Slowly clouds disperse, the snow melts
into your skin. A sun goes by, a moon.
The Earth turns its dirt under your feet.
The grief settles like a soft, wet haze.

The sun warms your skin for the moon’s kiss.
You shed a broken year, then five, then ten.
The grief evaporates like morning fog,
leaving its sheen of dew. Now you can see

the road in front of you, twenty years, fifty.
Tomorrow, with a sun you couldn’t know,
ignites a field of dew. Now you can see.
It doesn’t have to happen in a day.

***

after Kenneth Patchen

What a beautiful night! The breeze’s
long, gentle fingers and the salted sky!
Look, the moon’s eye is almost open!
The clouds are whales in a wide sea!
The earth is made of stars, but I am
made of earth! The quiet is crisp!
What a delicious smell, the pheromones
of flowers! What a generous song,
the evening’s blue harp! I am alive,
can’t you tell? My body has mapped
44 years! My feet have left 100,000,000
prints! Yet each step is still new, new, new!

Rachel White

As kids, we were always passing through
some phase we knew would soon be gone—
and never soon enough. The sad blue

hours lasted longer then; it’s true
that time accelerates, till one
day, you find that all your days are through.

The trick is to avidly pursue
life as though its ending were unknown,
& not let the breathless hourglass throw

your humor. A dream we’re passing through,
no one knows what it means, whether to frown
or laugh. The gulf that seems to separate you

is an illusion, an untrue
condition that feels as real as rain,
but isn’t—try breathing in & through

to a still place that asks who are you,
really
? A grace that arose from bone,
obscure genius, just passing through

an attempt to unite our two
natures, the seen and the unseen,
a kaleidoscope of every hue,
the arc we are just passing through.

***

…was the name of the program at the planetarium
in the physics department where my father was employed,
helped put it together—matched images to the score,
Tomita’s Mellotron wobbling chords of Clair de lune,

momentous & metallic in outer space—
I would reverse the tape on the silver reel to reel
in our living room again and again, knew exactly how far
to rewind to hear it once more—a reverb of soaring light

and cosmic wind across an expanse of galaxies
like dancing snowflakes—(at three or four, perhaps
my earliest memory)  Afterward in the Opel Caravan
with wraparound glass—steel blue like clouds

of dust and gas that coalesce into stars—
the whole way home I couldn’t stop crying— 
Finally my parents pulled over to ask,
What has you so upset? 

They seemed so far away,
but persisted until I told them—
the sun will burn out— 
They laughed—

that will happen
in the distant future—
not understanding
that it made no difference.

***

Lost this month—you—
then your sweet old cats, two.
Their worn bones knew
they would no longer be seeing you.

They say things come in threes.
With these, I’m hoping for a reprieve
from death, at least for now…
the autumn sky has never been more blue.

***

Linda Whittenberg

You remember how, on the way to church,
she would clean your face with a spit bath,
how she stroked your back with tips 
of her fingernails until you fell asleep
beside her in the little bedroom
at Grandma’s house. That bedroom all
the two of you had of home.
 
This day will get you coming or going,
wring out whatever is left of the bittersweet.
It makes a nest for receiving bits of gratitude
that fly in and take off like buntings in springtime.
 Mothering is an ephemeral art. You get
the arabesque of motherhood just right 
before tripping on the next move.

All of it there when you meet for brunch
with a daughter and son, and, again
in the phone call from another, the firstborn. 
Every misstep wrapped in grace, affection
so strong its center holds even as it spins.

***

Jennifer Corbet

I stand near my dad’s house, just a few days before Christmas. Hundreds of red-winged blackbirds crowd and stir in the pine matriarch that oversees our mountain.  Tri-colored cawing ornaments adorning a December tree. I am mesmerized by the flashes of black and red that arc against ponderosa drab and brilliant white snow. The birds cackle and burble and croon, creating a riotous cloud of noise.  As we are nowhere near water, this mob’s presence in this place, at this time of year, puzzles me. 

Wind ruffles feathers
In patterns that resemble
A loosely thatched roof

“More ice cream?” he says, childlike eyes pleading from his gaunt and cancer-ravaged face.  He is hopeful and sincere, and I am torn in pieces by his request.  I am caring for my father, now in his last days.  It is his choice, which I readily but sadly accept, to refuse all treatment, food, and water and thus end the long struggle on his own terms.  After forty years of deteriorating mobility from spinal cord injury, and a host of unrelenting health issues, I get it.  This deeply metastatic cancer represents, to him, the final assault.  Enough.

Blackbirds croak wisdom
Primal guttural sounds scratch
Disconsolate skies

He is now delirious; remnants of the man I know are nearly gone.  “Ice cream?” he repeats softly, beseechingly, his voice sticky and slurred by dehydration.  Blinking away my tears, I gaze out the window and comment on the weather, distracting his fractured mind.  My heart wails as I stroke his depleted hair, honoring his decision and battling my own selfish desire to delay the inevitable.

Window showcases
Avian maneuvering
Granite peaks call

His breath slows, raspy inhales and exhales more punctuated and increasingly further apart.  I hold his hand, spellbound and struggling to process this moment–it is an anguishing free fall–and then he is gone.  I feel him leave and I sense his joy.

Red-flecked horde launches
Wings caress infinite sky
Mourning. Exulting.

***

On a gusty morning
Heavy with pondering
I bent to gather some debris
As I often do on my walks
Through the breathing piney woods

A blink of russet, caught
In the crunchy pre-spring grasses
A tiny nuthatch feather
Hardly bigger than my pinkie tip
Barely more than a thought
Of a feather
Catches my eye

Reddish brown and gray
Exquisitely insubstantial
I wonder that gravity
Managed to bring it down

Selfishly
I tuck it in my pocket
A little sorry to perhaps
Deprive a
Glossy black beetle
Of a stately cape
Or a preening chipmunk
Of a fine feathery fan

I feel that it is meant for me

I imagine that this avian calling card
Was thoughtfully plucked from
A generous red breast
Considering from its aerie
And placed just so as to capture
My eye And mind

An invitation
To soar on the senses
Drink in the momentary minutia
And tuck my heavy thoughts into
The fragrant vanilla bark
Of ponderosa pines
For future consideration
As nuthatches do

For a moment
I feel myself darting
Through lofty boughs
On light grey wings
The wind threshing my cares
From me like chaff
From grain
It is glorious

The ear flapping shake
Of an impatient canine head
Abruptly grounds me
Blinking, then smiling
I step forward into my day

I lost the feather, but it
Still floats on the breezes
Of my too often
Tempestuous thoughts
A reminder
To take things lightly

Penelope Scambly Schott

October snow
down to the lower slopes of the mountain,
the brown hills of fall,

boys in their football helmets
busy running drills,
this lighted sign for Homecoming Week—

come home.

Or if this little town never was your home,
say you grew up someplace far away,
come anyhow.

I will bake an apple pie in a blue pie pan,
polish my grandma’s silver napkin ring
for your ironed white napkin.

When you arrive, when I hug you this hard
against my breasts, I will never confess
how much I needed you.

David J. Rothman

John Macker

my ritual sit, silently between two futon sleeping dogs
blue sky scraped dry by north winds, vernal equinox at
9 p.m. last night, but I didn’t detect a seismic shift in my
methodical ruin
                                a northern flicker blown in today fastidiously
circumnavigates a sumac branch, his theatre of self, a loud klee-yer.
Spring was the only season that could make Persephone blush.
The skinny woman who lives across the street went into detox,
her helicopter pilot neighbor drops in to feed the stricken dogs.

Just beneath the surface the mundane is aflame with tyrannical spirit,
frayed flags and red-eyed sleepless winters
                                                                               we lost our tracks
somewhere concealed under snow, we lost track of
the soul’s resurrected red dusks, our fellow Americans
armed and concealed behind their shiverings⸺

I hope future extra-terrestrials speak Hopi or jazz
follow migrant trails into sweetened by rain ocotillo deserts
or into undersea mouths of speechless volcanos and have
mad visions of peace on earth
                                                        where every track a flower
every flower a cicada song that vanquishes the next
unheard of war, with its cease fires of troubled
sleep while Sandhill cranes lift off the bosque
legs dangling like antennae
high above

our ashes harried by the wind.

***

A lone scrub jay breaks the air
over a pot of sagging zinnias,
the tiny Indian Summer suns fill the
disturbed earth with light.
The silence wakens with a start.

I learned corvids have sensory consciousness,
rituals, curiosity, bully pulpits,      but a raven
won’t look at war and wonder, if God finds us
will he desert us?

A raven didn’t fly in just for the countdown
at Trinity Site or to nest in Oppenheimer’s hat.

I look around the sky and cannot imagine a poem
I’d want used to train AI, but in time they’ll
be able to train a crow to vote with its conscience,
I’m sure of it⸺
                         a vote for corvids is a vote for fun.

Today, the world has that omnivorous look in its eye.
Stellar’s jays will never lead a horse to water
but they’ve inhabited my fever dreams, my
aislings, my lullabies for more years than
I can count
                  with their Indian Summer flocks
                          their untrained presences of mind.

***

waning moon at dawn
feathery logjam of clouds
grey wolf’s river howl

Patricia Dubrava

for Kathleen Cain

On a September morning two moths fold
their wings within the front door window curtain.
I place the jar kept for this purpose over them,
one at a time. They obligingly flutter inside
and I take them out to resume their journey
back to Nebraska.

At least, I think that’s where they’re going.
In the spring they migrate through Denver on their way
to the mountains. More go west than return east in the fall,
a routine outcome of the natural world.
 
Being my authority on all questions of the moon,
cottonwood trees, native flora and fauna, Kathleen could
verify this. In a neighborhood meeting on turning
the last farmland into a park, she once asked,
“May I say a few words on behalf of the prairie grasses?”

Kathleen’s in Nebraska now, seeing her baby sister through
to the end, an office older sisters should not hold.
My baby brother, born when I was ten, has been gone
more years than he lived. September’s the birth month
of that skinny child who ran to leap into my arms
when I came home from college.
It is an old sorrow, softened at the edges, tucked away.

Kathleen wipes her sister’s face with a warm cloth,
hugs her, talks to her, in Nebraska, where these moths want to go.
Being there is grief itself but also a blessing. My brother died alone:
that edge of my old sorrow still keen.

When I lift the jar lid, the moths fly out of sight in an instant,
though I marvel at how such tiny wings carry them so far—
so far and back again.

***

You pace south to north, north to south
and I see you from my second story window
in glimpses between garages
but see enough to know your youth,
your slenderness, your long, red-tinted locs
pulled back tight in a high ponytail
that cascades down your back
and sways as you turn.
I see this, pretty girl,
when you pace north and turn south again.
I wouldn’t have seen you at all
were you not screaming into your phone,
causing me to rise from my desk.
At the top of your voice, you yell:
Why do you keep doing this to me?
Why do you keep doing this to me?
You know I love you.
You know I love you.

I hear your words because you repeat
everything half a dozen times
as you turn north or go back south.
I imagine going to the alley, telling you:
before you were born, I was with a man
of whom I asked that question,
over and again:
Why do you keep doing this to me?
Here’s what I know: He won’t change.
Hang up on him, pretty girl.
You could find someone else, someone
you wouldn’t have to scream at while pacing
my alley for forty minutes that seem forever.
But you won’t. I didn’t.
In your froth of hysteria, that’s the last thing
you need—an old white woman
appearing out of nowhere to tell you what to do.
Don’t tell me you don’t care,
don’t tell me you don’t care, 
you scream and I nod—it may be years,
it may be never, until you realize,
this time, this one time,
he’s telling the truth.

***

for Patti Bippus

On the flat roof the prickle
of sun-struck adobe wall warms my back.
Like the in and out of surf
caressing a pebbled shore,
wind in pines rises and falls,
chorused by Deer Creek’s run
through its elbowed path below.

On the far side of this valley,
aspens wink whitely in morning sun, 
the smoky haze of their bare branches
marking a border between palomino pasture
and green pines climbing upslope.

A gang of ravens gabbles from tree to tree.
In the house, faint ticking of heat registers,
the greedy crackle of fire, and no word spoken
these several sweet hours since breakfast.

You sit at your easel in the sunbathed porch
and I do not look, knowing I would cover
this page should anyone approach,
protecting the fragility of work in progress:
what is not yet owned cannot yet be given.

When I climbed the spiral to the roof,
an angry buzzing increased.
The tower windows were full of flies
hatched from eggs laid in ceiling vigas.
Alarmed at my presence, they swirled
around me till I flung open the rooftop door,
and like so many pent-up ideas,
they burst into the blue.

Suzanne Bassinger

Yesterday a dry canal.
Today—full-bellied, aching to spill Wyoming
snowmelt over dry Nebraska pastures.

You pay your dues, claim your allotment.
Call the ditchrider to open your headgate.
For two weeks you will move your water
every 8 hours. For two weeks you will walk
your field, shovel on shoulder, boots to thighs,
drag orange tarps and old fenceposts to
make a dam, turn out the flow, walk your field,
find the dry spots, avoid the badger holes that
steal it all, move your water, drag your tarp,
set a dam, shovel a notch, or find last years old one
because you’re tired, it’s late and
in 8 hours you’ll be back to move the water.
To walk your field, set your dam, shovel
a notch, turn out the flow.

For you—the cows low at the fence,
smelling the water, dreaming of grass.

***

You armored me with the Carhartt badge worn
by farmers, utility workers, auto mechanics.
I loved the secret lingerie
of the chorus-girl red taffeta lining
whispering as I slipped into
the manliness of faded black-to-gray
rough canvas bib overalls sporting
frayed heels, manure stains, barb-wire
tears from sagging fences.
Loved to clasp your buckles
over my shoulders, pull zipper
from belly to chest, stride
out into the day. Invincible.

I could laugh at negative
Fahrenheit, wind chill warnings, boot-deep snow.
Walk fearless into the February morning
bucking-horse-cold feedings, mid-day negative
Fahrenheit ice-breaking of water troughs,
and then: the evening music
of frost-backed horses nickering
for the chilled grass hay, lots of it,
to stoke their bellies through
the coming bone-cold night.

When it was all done, and ice clung
to my legs as I waded back
to the glowing house, I would unzip
and unbuckle. Smile as black canvas
slipped way to red taffeta.
Stand you frozen-legged over
the heater vent to thaw. To wait to hold me
again tomorrow morning. You gave me
invincible. Indestructible
Lined with chorus girl songs
of red taffeta.

Lila Bear

First, you add the sugar and the eggs, and you whip until they’re fluffy.

No, first you preheat the oven to 350.

In a house where the rabbi sends you homemade hot sauce but tells you your mother converted too late for you to count,

it is not knowing the difference between Yiddish and Hebrew.

It is Googling why Adam Sandler sings about yarmulkes when you’ve always heard them called kippahs.

Second, as in most recipes, you add the wets: the oil, the lemon juice, the extract

In a house where you attended a bar mitzvah for your brother, where the Jewish mothers pulled your dress over your breasts but tell you that you ought not apply to birthright because you don’t count,

it is whether or not to add a C in Hanukkah.

It is why exactly you don’t write the O in G-d.

Third, you add in the dries, and you stir with never a metal spoon until the

dough is stiff.

In a bar one day, your more Jewish friend raises you high in a chair and gives you a bat mitzvah. You’re drunk, and you don’t know Hebrew.

Your mother is at home using a glass to cut holes in the dough. Someone told her she didn’t count once, too. Then, in a bath surrounded by friends, she counted. Now she is afraid of German people and cries at mention of the pile of shoes. You do, too, but it’s in a goyish way.

Fourth, you fill the dough with whatever fruit filling you choose and pinch it not all the way shut into either the shape of Haman’s ear or Esther’s vulva, whatever you believe.


In a house where your mother washed your dead grandmother’s stiff body – and true, you refused to help, opting to cry instead – and you are told you didn’t grow up Jewish,

it is buying dreidels because you feel compelled to but not because you’ll use them.

It is wanting your children to call you Ima before you even want children.

Fifth, you bake for 18-22 minutes.

In a house where your mother told you that for your Jewish wedding, you’d get henna on your feet, you don’t count.

So why don’t you just use cake mix?

***

When I named myself, it was out of ego.
“Leota” is a lioness of the people,
and her name was found etched in a gravestone,
and I had hoped to wrap myself in that otherwordly, feline skin,
to bare my teeth and shake my mane atop a concrete soapbox 
for diplomacy.
But I woke up, no cubs to mother, no podium from which to preach,
just panties on the floor—
groggy and human—
plain old breakable (broken) flesh,
plain old breakable (broken) hymen,
and  my claws were retracted so far inside me
I think I’d coughed them up with my voice and my “No”s,
and my fur had been brushed out in clumps by soothing hands.
“You’re Beautiful,” Declares The Hunter, one hand on my fur and the other
on his pistol.
“It Will Be Good For You,” Promises The Taxidermist,
and somewhere on a wall I am on display,
midgrowl,
while here I am on a different kind of display,
midwhimper.

***

Spinning me in a tireswing and smoking a cigar, you tell me, 
“This is great. I’m going to write a poem about this.”
I remind you every week, 
ask to see what I hope is a proclamation of awe,
and you tell me it is not yet done.
A year passes, 
and I continue to pick apart your rhyme,
but I am never in the scheme.
Playing tetherball in a sunflower field,
you tell me, 
“I’m going to write a poem about this moment, but please don’t remind me.
I have a thing about that. 
You kept reminding me about the other poem,
and so I could never write it
even though I really wanted to.”
so I am patient and silent
(things that do not come easy)
and your accidental lesson reaches me
because I wait for it to come,
but it never does.
I feign nonchalance when I read a poem that has a moment I recognize,
a phrase that captures an essence I acknowledge to be mine,
and I ask, “Oh, is that line about me?”
but it never is.

***

It breaks everyone’s fucking heart to know how many times they could have
spilled it 
but the phone just kept ringing,
and you can have swimming vision over dark beers all you want
or at least until 3 when they kick you out
and as the saying goes:
nothing good happens after 2.
So we should stop trying so hard to revel in our brokenness,
stop getting into each other’s cars and faces 
and threatening to blacken our knuckles on each other’s teeth and jawlines.
We should listen to our mothers and go to bed.
You know someone matters to you when they start infiltrating your slurred
speech
and you start waking up drenched in sweat from your latest nightmare
about them
and you don’t know how to stop shaking when confronted with the glory
of their face,
and you are willing to crush their nose bone if it means you get to make up
afterward.
Take a precious moment, spit on it, cover it in sand, then wonder why
they say you are all hammers.
Have no sympathy for their death toll, their Rorschach painting done in their
own blood, their wet eyelashes clumped together,
then scream in the parking lot of the bar that they never believed in your
compassion
anyway.