Poetry

by Carmen Mason

First I curse the invisible vise    the air   sky   alien breath
agents of ache and heat and then this     an endless      wrenching      cough
bent on breaking down this fragile frame I’ve fortified for years
still at seventy appearing ept !
Then mere and    mothy    I surrender     falling down into bed
the thick layers purchased for pastel prettiness and cozy sleep
now pulled and  knotted    clumsily around me
putrid wisps of musk and powder in the air
and I      pummeled       muscleless       humiliated
the indignity of flu       rendering me      lightweight      moaning
woe                                           is                                           me
 

Oh just once more to be encased in a birthing bag
new and fit                   refracting a fiery                 stained-glass grandeur
just once more a            feathery                 flickering                     fluttering thing
soaring to glory or radiant ruin
 

Carmen Mason has been writing poems since she was six, has won poetry prizes throughout the years, has been published in small magazines and enjoys sharing her poetry at open mikes. She writes short stories and memoir, but feels her most intrinsic ‘voice’ is a poetic one.

by Phyllis Kriegel

Old Sarah laughed
Foretasting pleasure
When patriarch Abraham—
The old clothes dealer—
Would get her with child.
 

When Hades raped Demeter’s
Slender-ankled daughter Persephone
(Who ate a blood-red pomegranate seed)
The mother’s grief and anger
Turned the world deadly dark.
 

Then Baubo, goddess of bawdy,
Told a ribald story and gleefully
Showed her pudenda,
Demeter laughed and the whole earth
Grew heavy with green leaves and flowers.
 

Phyllis Kriegel:

Dallied with Dante
Played at Proust
Cuddled with Kafka

Then it hit me:

Stories happen
to those
 Who write them.

by Phyllis Kriegel

When Daddy danced in the living room
to Sunday’s Philharmonic
music pouring out of
our mahogany Magnavox
my world turned joyous.
So graceful, so handsome–
as light on his feet as Fred Astaire–
whirling with daring leap
to coffee table for finale.
We laughed.
We clapped.
Now, I wonder—
Did he feel like a bird
soaring over Hackensack
or think of bearded
men dancing in Vilna?
 

Phyllis Kriegel:

Dallied with Dante
Played at Proust
Cuddled with Kafka

Then it hit me:

Stories happen
to those 
Who write them.

by Mark Fischweicher

Sestina – Waves of Light

For Joe

Enough,
A dish, not waves
crashing, wakes me;  no barefoot summer memories.
It’s cold and dark, my feet
are wrapped in blankets for the night and I assure
you, there’s no bold goddess, no Ms. Darkness disrobing for the light.

My miss-fortune’s on the kitchen floor; the light’s
fluorescent hum can prove it. I’ve seen enough.
I’ll lie awake a while and yawn, eyes closed. I’m sure
to dream.         Bursts of sky.     Walls           Someone waves!
Awake again!  And Itching. I pick the callused skin that gathers on my feet
And think:  Years ago he had the same dry callused skin, remember.

I had to help him with his socks; the memory
of those toe-nails, all thick and chalky, broken. No delight
to pull socks over Them.        Days before he died they fixed the feet.
Orange ointment covered the tips of toes. It was enough,
after the pneumonia, to have them fixed. He smiled where just months earlier
 he’d waved
from the porch, black cloth around his eyes,
comically ordering the whole block around.   Sure

of himself.      Sudden blindness from the laser treatments.  How could he be so
sure
it would return; that the diabetic blood would melt into memory,
that bandages removed, he would see again? How could he wave
as if it were a minor setback, this lack of light,
when that, as far as I could see, was all he demanded from it all, light enough
to see…           The blindness ended, but, after the pneumonia, he never got to his

feet

again…  Now they keep me up.          Base itching feet.
Bright night. Moonlight.         Sweep ashore
the chances of another poem.             It is my inheritance to know what is
enough.
I was meant to be awake now, already full of memory
like the sea, and as the light
lifts, the sea falls and the moon waves

foam across the sand.          But First, I will go pick up the dish, and with a wave
of my hand, banish the cat who jumps on the counter.          Silent feet
padding around the pile of dishes until she leaps, alight-
ing on my shoulders; purring around my neck as sure
as ever she has done no wrong waking me to all these memories.
And for me, in the middle of this night, her purring is enough.

There is enough quietness at night; sleep. Waves of light
wash up from in, like darkness, like memory.
I pick at my dry feet. They will get better. I am sure.

Mark Fischweicher has been scratching out poems since junior high school and still hopes they will save the world and help him become a man.

by Mark Fischweicher

The conch shell in the bookcase should just clam up.
Offering me its cheap vacation doesn’t work anymore.
 

Fluted and polished, the poem secretes a covering
too hard to break,
with all those waves crashing in my ear.
It’s a bloody mess inside.
Bullet shells never removed.
Scalloped edges,
ecto-skeletal thoughts fragile as a Robin’s egg
but not as well painted nor as blue.
 

You look along the shoreline for just the right one,
ahh . .  . Baloney!
It’s a shell game,
a tide pool covered with sea scum.
Whatever lives here is wind whipped, and storm tossed
and not as sweet as the pastry
shell we dress it up in.
 

I’m being shelled!
Periwinkle!
Cowrie limpet mussel cockle whelk.
All painted and carved,
the poem
 

a shell of what it was,
not worth the wampum.
My earring’s
but a cameo.
 

But that one on the bookcase came from Dot
She collected seashells. Never sold them by the seashore.
She painted one canvas (maybe two) in her whole life,
so completely blue,
you can see her brush in the waves.
 

And, in the chambers of it,
I still hear her
babbling away.
 

Mark Fischweicher has been scratching out poems since junior high school and still hopes they will save the world and help him become a man.

by Eileen Brener

I ride the sun’s first pink ribbon,
landing in the city care forgot.  Where
water, like trouble, isn’t seen, but felt.
Where poverty and wreckage are
bandaged away for an annual madness.
 

I join others: maidens and mothers,
housewives and hags, staggering
already in the golden noon. God-
intoxicated, Dionysus-kissed, vines
around our heads, we roam
the streets, practice savage rites,
dance to feral music. Woe to any
man or animal our talons
claw.  Frenzied, we fall
in doorways, drunken,
blood-besmirched.
 

Ash Wednesday’s shadow
bleeds into the long six weeks
of Lent. Our ravings done, we
limp away leaving the city our
filth and madness. We bristle
with a new decorum.
 

As an appellate court staff attorney in pre-IRP days, Eileen Brener wrote proposed opinions and occasionally taught—“lord help me!”—legal writing.  Now, thanks to IRP, she has left lawyerly letters for fiction—dark stories and light poems.

by Eileen Brener

            I am the family face;
            Flesh perishes. I live on…
                        Thomas Hardy, “Heredity”

Always a funeral
pulls us back—
Peachtree Street,
the old compound,
we sisters and cousins,
quiet now, thin,
sit among blossoming
trees—fuchsia, cerise,
magenta—
azalea shrubs planted
by grandparents.
 

The next generations
chatter—children,
parents, babies—
all the old stories
retold to the undersong
of loss.  We hear
in a teen’s voice notes
of an aunt’s lilting alto
and recognize my father’s
curly red hair on a ten-
year-old he never knew.
 

As an appellate court staff attorney in pre-IRP days, Eileen Brener wrote proposed opinions and occasionally taught—“lord help me!”—legal writing.  Now, thanks to IRP, she has left lawyerly letters for fiction—dark stories and light poems.