January 8-14, 2018: Poetry from Nancy Shiffrin and Jen Karetnick

Ceremony

for AJF

I like my baad children best
the ones who throw spitballs interrupt contradict
when you began your elephant walk through my
fine crystal and china I ignored shattered glass
wondered what your fleshy muse would reveal
you wrote about
trunks from The Great War purchased at a Swap Meet
rats owls Iphigenia Lot’s Wife
asked to cut a line you raved about Ashberry
seduced a classmate
demanded absolution at The Iguana Cafe

Not Mother Sister Wife nor Lover
I don’t know how to grieve you
I need a ceremony for these images
         uncut boys snapping towels
         young man’s tongue washing your body
and these lines to the woman you love
         “the great blue heron stands in perfect solitude
         outside your window dawn illuminates the lake”

my friends say I never really forgive
I envy your knowledge of the life beyond my eyelid
have you met Elvis and Mileva?
do Sharron and Zeyde converse?
this week I watched old movies with my niece
rushed to the hospital to
hear my great-nephew’s birth-cry
I curl up with hot tea and Ashberry
"dreamed role-patterns divisions of grace
lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters

this poem is sad because
it wants to be yours and cannot"

Building the Future

We told the city
it was a garden shed,
stocked up on can openers
and machetes, steel siding
with a guarantee to last
the lifespan of a marmoset.
 
We told the city
it was a tiki hut,
learned how to harvest
bamboo and cut rattan,
plait the finest tossa jute
and also eat it in soup.
 
We told the city
it was a tree house,
sunk pillars next to
each mango in its patient
position leftover
from the plantation days,
 
trunks set into formation
like clarinets in a marching band.
We said we would evacuate
along the prescribed path,
without our pets
but with our children
 
and important papers,
enough belongings
for a day or two
in the school gym.
We never told the city
kelong, pang uk, palfito,
 
heliotrope, stilt house,
not because the city
told us they didn’t have
permits for the end
of dry-footed days
but because when it came
 
time to hoist it like a flag
and follow suit,
we had already found
our hot, briny resolve
while the city was still
looking for a problem.