Three Poems by Francie Camper
What Is Certain
Black lace of trees against a winter dawn
sky. The tree, the rock, a river.
His hand on the small of my back.
Wind casting back the spray of the wave —
spray caught in sunlight.
How the sun sets as always, moon rises,
tides shift twice in a day.
That this will end badly.
Atmospheric river, a cliff collapses,
a country teeters then falls,
deafening echo of history,
mind-numbed, that turning away,
a wave of denial — I have caught that too.
I still hide in the beauty.
* * * * *
Where I Am From
I have come for a wallet.
The man at the leather store
has narrow eyes
disturbing teeth
and a big story that I do not care to hear.
But I am often mistaken for friendly
and so he begins:
Where are you from?
I give him an answer he already knows.
The day is cold and blindingly bright.
I believe that people are good.
Where are you from?
I am from here.
My father was from Lebanon.
There is warmth in the flash
of his smile. I am Syrian, he tells me.
It is all one country, Lebanon, Syria,
Jordan except for those damned Turks,
it would still be one country.
His story picks up speed
and his mouth twists, I can tell,
he doesn’t know what to say
about the Israelis, it’s more of a mumble
the Jews from Europe, they suffered too
much, now they want to kill all of us.
Not hatred, more like wisdom.
I cannot solve this, nor can he.
I buy a hand-sewn wallet
make my way out of the store.
* * * * *
Burial
When I didn’t know how to bury my mother, I called my friend Henry who moonlighted
as a mohel and knew all manner of Jewish ritual and though I knew relatively little,
in those long hours, after I’d chosen her suit and jewelry, thought about what wood
finish, tried to remember the coffins of relatives — something told me to call Henry.
What I told him was that her sister, aunt, and cousins would expect her to be sent out
in style and though her grandparents who escaped the pogroms were Orthodox, if I chose
the traditional shroud and plain pine box, there would be a chorus of they sent you in that?
and she would feel as she had throughout her life — less than. I needed to know what the burial
ritual meant. Henry said that there are two times in life when each of us is naked before
God — at birth and at death and that between these two times we all go about living
our lives, we do our nonsense is what he said, and that if I chose her good suit and pearls
and a shiny box, they would say they sent you in that? It turned out to be a very good thing
that I made this choice because the grave they opened for her in the crowded family plot
was just big enough for the plain pine box, my shrouded little mother.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Three Poems by Fan Ogilvie
The Thunder Over All
Everything and nothing
just like us all.
The flight attendant
serving dinner in the cockpit
to the captain
leaned against the button
which moved
the pilot
into the control yoke
and the plane dove
10,000 feet in seconds.
The thunder was silent
there was nothing to say.
God is the pilot, the plane, the attendant,
the dinner, control button, the yoke
every molecule from
every point to every point.
The thunder rumbled.
The thunder sympathizes
with 50 passengers hurt.
No one died.
The thunder sighed.
The skies are black
The earth is alight
The thunder can sleep
in control of his might.
And he reflects in silence.
Datta damyata dayadvam
Thank you Thomas Stearns.
* * * * *
Wet Or Dry
for Wislawa Szymborska
Take a look, a hard look
At a newborn baby
Almost edible you say
As wet as we get
From the placenta to naked body
To the breast to the bath —
Wet look from the eyes
Nose mouth wet bones
Inside mostly water —
Then from the long mirror
Look at us — our body our faces
Look back at us —
Dry as sand
When sand is dry
Cold, dry like dry canvas.
Then the baby cries
And we cry naked.
The rain pours then stops.
* * * * *
It Is Easter
It is Easter
It is dark
I have died
Breath has not left
Nor vision
These words have no meaning
There are angels singing
But it is us
With no personhood
It is a singing halo
We are told all
There is to know
By the source
Of all there is
We will understand
Light and darkness
All blessings of life
As if for the first time
The universe will be revealed
And it will terrify
It may have been nothing
To nothing for some
It is not nothing
Anymore
Death is no more
Our guide is vibration
Music
Silence
Connection
Prayer
We will achieve love
We will enter love
We are stripped
Of wrong entered as a test
Dissolved and absolved
The day is breaking
It is Easter
And we are alive
Breathing
And seeing
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦. ✦
Three Poems by Fran Schumer
The Reference Room at the Jersey City Library
Thanks for calling me, a voice not a recording,
in faltering English — your book is ready.
Thanks for working at the library, hours now limited,
closed Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays.
Thanks for this building, old but beautiful, the marble stairs,
decorative iron railings, skylight, built in better days.
People came to read more than magazines.
Now some come to learn coding.
Thanks for the free computers.
Upstairs, an empty room.
Look at this, my husband says.
Rows and rows of reference books.
We walk along the silent aisles.
“Twentieth Century Literary Criticism,” untouched.
Thanks for all 52 volumes.
Thanks for this unused collection of Poetry Criticism.
It starts at the “Twa Corbies,” vol. 1. No one has checked any out.
Thanks for updating it anyway: Kevin Young, Volume 85.
Thanks for the complete set of the New Cambridge Medieval History,
all twelve volumes! Thanks!
And … the Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies, including Nordic, Central
and Southeastern Europe. Western Europe updated this year to include information
about the War in Ukraine. Thanks!
Thanks for the books of maps, dishes, pottery;
Native American, enslaved people’s histories.
Thanks for the Encyclopedia of the Ghettos.
Thank you for this terrifying shelf, and this other — a History of Concentration Camps.
Thanks for reminding me that books like these, all of these, in every aisle, were burned —
and even if hardly anyone ever looks at them, they’re here.
Thanks.
* * * * *
Wash Ashore
We sold a piano,
tossed books into dumpsters,
parents into graves.
This is what happens
when you move to an island
in later years —
Your roots like new grass
planted on eroding dunes,
too frail to grab on to new life.
Then one day you see a man
in yoga class you met at a party
the other night. A new root takes hold.
* * * * *
Triggering Town, 1967
— homage to an essay by Richard Hugo on poetic theory
This is my town that no longer exists,
my father’s store now a boutique —
The scent of roach spray brings tears
though it’s been years
since vats of chemicals crowded
the rear of that dark, gloomy space,
years since I breathed the poisons
he mixed on paper plates,
petals around the stick shift
of his tiny Hillman Husky car,
its color a lovely powder blue.
This is my town that no longer exists.
Grates covered the doors
of the store after break ins.
After one, my father and brother
drove at midnight to board up
the hole in the roof. I was a girl,
exiled at home in my bed,
imagining that hole, and beyond it
stars in the dark, velvet sky.
I could dream. Shy, my father
was shy with me, his only daughter.
When he told me what they had
to clean from the floor, he did not
use an expletive. Instead, he said
the burglar was so scared, he –
and this my father bent to whisper –
“defecated.” My father said this
without malice or disgust, only pity.
This is my town that no longer exists,
my mother ailing, my father deep
in a grave I will visit maybe once,
that town so far in the past,
beneath leafy branches,
an arcade over a city street.
On a bench in a park, he points
to the shape of a perfect tree.
This is beauty, he says.
This was my triggering town.