This issue we feature the work of three marvelous poets.
My Grandparents’ Kitchen
by Chani Zwibel
One dirty blue towel
Red cherries and edge of tablecloth
Jewel-blue of a potato chip bag
Of a heart that was
A beer
Cardinal, capital, crush
Sitting crossed-legged
On a chair in my grandparents’ kitchen
A dusty smoke-yellowed room 120 years old
Branch lifts in the moonlit air
In a bottle of drink
The dream:
Snow
One red jewel of a cardinal sitting on a branch in the snow.
Surrogacy
by Kimberly Harding
Sugary-coated surrogacy
How many had I birthed
Having never been pregnant?
Tiny fists (or was it foots)
Looped in hand as I pulled
Strings and all through the candy-lined passage
My tunnel gapes
Ebbs and swells
More compliant than elastic
The tensile fibers slackened with fistula fulminations
Past leaking
Into present timely space
All crownings polar
My preparations for naught
Stitch me closed.
I am done.
The Oven
by Chani Zwibel
Hot inside a hot inside
The better cake baker
Makes sweet pound cake
Red coils fed by electricity
Emanate heat
Rise, rise
Chemical infusion of sugar and egg
Be thou this week’s coffee companion
Make in thy heavy heated heart
a macaroni of exquisite cheese
Green beans and mashed potatoes
Prepare me a bird perhaps,
But only if you hunted for it,
Spent hours in the cold snow tracking
Its wounded feathers to death.
Refinishing
by Catherine McGuire
First the varnish has to go—
sand down the gloss, so wounded
by rain and sun; the long gaping sores
of peel and chip. Take a brush
to the half-flattened rungs
that hold a back in place
grate off the old walnut stain
get it as bare as possible.
Then whitewash —
prime the scoured surface
to a uniform blank, a sculpted form
of new possibilities.
Finally, coax this chair to bloom:
coral, saffron, blue
bring out the quizzical curves
with a hint of gold leaf.
Celebrate the sturdy seat, bulbous arms
slender legs. A chintz cushion
and a place in the garden —
no longer the dining chair pulled up
to that dark table where you ate together.
