Ingrid Bruck
Ingrid Bruck lives in Pennsylvania Amish country, a landscape that inhabits her poetry. A retired library director, she writes short forms and poetry. She writes a monthly column, “Pearl Diving,” featuring online writer resources for Between These Shores Books and serves on the BTSA editorial team. Some current work appears in Failed Haiku, Heron’s Nest, Sanctuary Magazine and Verse-Virtual. Ingrid is the author of the poetry collection Finding Stella Maris. Poetry website: www.ingridbruck.com
The following work is Copyright © 2022, and owned by Ingrid Bruck and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
7 Ronka
Don’t Gossip
Afterwards is too late to say, “I’m sorry.”
Hurtful words can’t be unsaid.
Nana’s first child was born before marriage.
She never gossips or badmouths others,
she’s a woman who keeps secrets.
Hunger
Two fingers of Courvoisier
and one persimmon,
that’s my dinner—
enough to satisfy hunger,
not enough to fill loneliness.
I Reconsider
I say to the Guatemalateco, I’m American.
A proud daughter of immigrant Finns,
I claim the home of the free and the brave,
my land of mountains, plains, two oceans.
He replies with a spit to the floor and grinds his sandal.
More Row
Raffi sings her favorite song.
Uh-oh. Row-row. Wrenna protests when Row Your Boat stops playing.
Her Papa understands one-year-old speech—
the same way he knows an “uh-oh” means, Spilled milk, fetch a rag,
he sets the song in a loop and Row-Row repeats.
Buck in a China Shop
A buck with a six-point rack
crashes through the library window.
Glass shatters, he bleeds
down the steps of a story circle
where he rests on his knees on picture books.
Falling
large yellow snowflakes
bounce in a gray cloud slide,
trees let go a jitter and jive
to the grass and weeds
waiting to wear them.
Remix
Shake rattle and mashup—
i replay a player piano roll backwards:
song lyrics are pepper and salt on potatoes,
music chimes in my ears as I recount
a remix of the day.
Julene Tripp Weaver
Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle. Her third poetry book, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and won the Bisexual Book Award. Her work is widely published. Recent anthologies include: Covid, Isolation & Hope: Artists Respond to the Pandemic, and, Poets Speaking to Poets: Echoes and Tributes. From her memoir writing, two essays are in the anthology, But You Don’t Look Sick: The Real Life Adventures of Fibro Bitches, Lupus Warriors, and other Super Heroes Battling Invisible Illness. Visit Julene on the web here.
The following work is Copyright © 2022, and owned by Julene Tripp Weaver and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Free Love
Nothing personal
back then I had no
stick-to-it-ness
Not bound or burdened
anticipating the thrill of the shiny new
the glint of polished gold
Nothing personal
my roll-in-the-hay rotation
not meant to harm
rather, the belief one could
love many
a long broken story
How simple to hurt you
times over
a multiplication table
where a prime number
set at two wandered lost midst
flickering moonlight
Dazed by slickness
willing to ride a colt,
a buck soft under-fur
on a cool evening a choice
a nightcap
wiry body electric
The future a distant thing
norms broken kissed us
with sorry
sex a game that gnaws
a war devised
between the sexes never fair
