Second Bloom - Anya Krugovoy Silver Poiema Poetry Series

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in the tilting

      rooms, he recognized some simple objects:

      a milk jug once filled with daisies, a single shoe.

      Where a mirror had dangled, a darkened oval

      remained on the wall. No bark, no call, no singing.

      But though he didn’t understand what he saw,

      he knew the tree, broad and green, was a blessing.

      Demeter Mourns the Sisters

      As though grief were not enough,

      I must write of it. Ulcerous earth

      demands my black-seeded poppies.

      Women’s names frame ebony October:

      Maria, Julie, Ishiuan, Anne.

      I want to recast them as verbs,

      sink them like bulbs, latent but alive,

      and await their allium globes

      once the shriving is over.

      But I don’t bear false hopes.

      My gift to the mourning is winter.

      Leaflessness winnows pain.

      Imagine the trees bare for your sake,

      branches click clacking in the wind

      like fluid-filled lungs wheezing air.

      Follow my shadow. Pluck the bitter

      herbs at your feet, then baste

      with them a steaming bowl of tubers.

      Almond Blossoms

      On night shift in the ICU,

      Rebecca tends to the sickest

      patients, the ones subdued

      on morphine and likely to die.

      When she’s free, she drives

      the backroads of California,

      photographing almond trees.

      Joy is a gift not given to all.

      In pain, it’s evasive as a squirrel.

      My friend, who can no longer lift

      her head, her neck bowed down

      with blistered tumors, tells me

      I’m tired of fighting the beast.

      So I clasp happiness while it exists.

      Almond crowns bloom so briefly.

      One day they’re white, the next, green.

      Rebecca works in the fluorescent night.

      In the afternoons, she photographs

      the clapping, breathing trees.

      There Are Times

      Today, when I could be writing,

      I sit waiting for a nurse to access me

      (that is, puncture me with a needle).

      I cannot work because of the talk,

      the cold room, the television’s jabber.

      The microwave smells of grease and burn.

      I want words, but my mind stalls.

      Too much blabbering, too many bells.

      Staring into the IV’s neutral blue gaze,

      I search for an apt metaphor for poetry:

      my burning eye, my bride, my thread.

      I’m not sure whether I’ve given up

      on words, or whether they’ve deserted me.

      I’m in the sea, there’s no comfort

      in the tides, my spit tastes of saline.

      Department Meeting

      Tragedy won’t stop the world’s drone.

      Weekly meetings continue, typed agendas

      shuffled on the table like the Dead Sea’s tides.

      Illness remains impolite among colleagues.

      When I mention cancer, the eyes around me lower.

      The woman to my right pushes up her glasses.

      The woman to my left nods vaguely, pen hovering.

      Then all attention turns to questions of the budget.

      Outside the window, boughs rustle pointlessly.

      Everyone agrees that Shakespeare is still relevant.

      The eyelet of a shoe imperceptibly loosens

      from its stitching, the unraveling begun in earnest.

      Even words seem to lose their stickiness and fall,

      sickly, from the ceiling tiles. Only I notice them.

      Very slowly, so as not to make anyone nervous,

      I shake my head and x’s drop from my hair.

      To a Healthy Friend

      What is suffering but tedium?

      Picking pebbles from lentils,

      numb feet stumbling to the bathroom,

      hoping to make it to the toilet on time.

      But off go the panties to be scrubbed.

      We’re gross and boring, and if no one wants to listen,

      I don’t blame them. I was that way, too.

      Do you think I want your dish-rag pity

      wrung all over my lap? Your cat eye comfort?

      Everyone dies. That’s supposed to lift me

      to my toes and spin my final pas de deux?

      Tell you what. Leave the suffering to us.

      You’re not invited. Eat pound cake

      till your buckle bursts. Lose everything.

      How to Talk to a Sick Woman

      Do not make me your nightmare.

      Refrain from invoking me among

      the A,B,C’s of your fear.

      (There’s no cure, it’s true. That’s why

      I’m so blue.)

      I’m not your it could be worse

      or proof of the smallness of your woes.

      My bad luck is not your good luck.

      (And by the way, fuck you.)

      Your pity, though meant to be kind,

      undoes me. I find it dreary.

      Nor am I the Madonna of cancer,

      your bow-arched Amazon. Make me your inspiration

      if you like, but I don’t deserve praise.

      My days are as ordinary as yours.

      And when I die, what will you do?

      You’ll have lost your light-strung Santos.

      Cede me back my story.

      My veins spout open, then close like magic.

      I don’t dread death more than you do.

      Only

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