Poems
Old Greensboro Road
Painted horse I call Beauty, distant horse
I only pass, at speed, no reason to believe
you are female, or that you love
the chestnut brown pastured beside you,
but I name him Amber. Beauty, I seek you,
and when I cannot find you, I know you’re
hiding from the sun and not from me.
Main Street Rag
Naked
A huge breast glowing in the sky
appears to me as I near home,
a mirage of fiery, fleshy orange
on a Monday in December.
I have no poet’s praise for it,
only a woman’s astonishment
at a monstrous bitch of a moon,
a crone’s breast bared to the sky.
Moist Poetry Journal
Walter Magazine (January, 2024)
Docking in New York Harbor, 1908
Each step up from steerage brings her closer
to the lights of a city she could not have dreamed of.
Elizabeth Goldberg grasps her black wool skirt
by the hem, her other hand on the cold stair rail.
Her best muslin blouse sticks to her skin.
The small wooden trunk of her belongings is below.
The engines of the SS Rijndam groan to silence.
Elizabeth is young, healthy, strong.
She knows how to sew dresses and do fine embroidery.
Her needles, thimbles, and her pincushion
with its china lady on top, gift from her cousins,
are wrapped in muslin and batting in the trunk.
She cannot speak the language of the soldiers
and doctors who will send her back or let her stay.
The crowd on the deck stinks of wet wool and sweat.
The babies are dirty and sick; there has been no fresh milk.
The women yell at the children and the husbands.
No one has slept since the Rijndam left Rotterdam.
Elizabeth fears the men; they pinch and grab.
She stands in the back gulping clean night air.
In her coat pocket is a letter for her mother, Gitel.
How can she post it?
In the letter that will never reach Dubinki
Elizabeth tells Gitel about her nineteen days at sea,
how the ship rocked and the people groaned and cursed.
She has already seen things her mother will never see.
She will never see her mother again.
My grandmother tips her face up.
Her spectacles catch the stars, dimmer here
than in all of Lithuania, dimmer, dimmer,
but a few stars have followed her to America.
The Poetry Buffet: An Anthology of New Orleans Poetry