April 4-10, 2022: Poetry from Ingrid Bruck and Julene Weaver

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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

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