Shrine
It’s not that simple I say
to my friend who says
of course you’re sad your
son left. I wish, I want to
say it was just that. I want
to know the source, second
it started, the pivotal event.
Where is the holy grail of
my sadness? That fuzzy
grey whisper. The unwelcomed
invitation that is no longer
an invitation. But when did
it start? This morning, waking
with a stiff hip? Last week,
leaving my daughters? Or
before the war? Or when
Cynthia died or when Elly
got her first vaccination
and I cried more than her
or when my softball coach
was killed riding her moped
when I was eight? And I hated
softball but I loved her. Or
all the drunk Christmases
or birthdays or bruises or
watching my mom grin and
bear it. Never the right time,
there were degrees to get and
babies to birth and lunches
to make and others’ tears
to wipe, fears to soothe. Never
the right time. But today when
the dance teacher says laugh
and everyone in the class
shakes with laughter. I say no,
inside. I say no, it’s time to
be sad. For the war, and my
children an ocean away finding
their way, and my aging
mother and anger everywhere
and all the addictions and all
the babies not wanted and
all the people unloved. You
have to see the goodness
and sunshine another friend
says, and I smile and say,
but first I must make a
shrine to sadness
Rilke
Walking down Rothschild, I listen to
Leon Bridges sing about rivers. I miss
my mother who lives nowhere near a
river. The streets still asleep feel sad.
Like the loneliness I woke with. And
tried to cure with sweet black coffee
and Rilke, the poet who diagnosed
his solitude as the greatest sadness
of his life. I pass an outdoor café, just
beginning to open and wonder—in
another time and place—if Rilke and I
would have been friends. Sipping our
coffees at Café Slavia in Prague. Quoting
Faust and debating spirituality. Versus
materialism. Smoking long cigarettes
that would burn our eyes. We would share
our latest creations and I would say
fabulous and he would pause a long
pause and say try this or that. I
imagine, nearly tripping over a yellow
stone on a street that makes me think
of Paris. Or Prague. And Rilke. With
its bougainvillea purples and its
blue doors and graffiti and the tabby
cat, walking alone just like me.
Driving to Manhattan on a Friday Morning
Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe
but not the catastrophe.
-Frannie Choi
It’s just after 7 am and I am
driving a packed rented SUV
up to New York and hoping
Google Maps works in this car
and hoping the heavy skies
don’t unleash precipitation. Right
at this moment—I mean, I could
handle a few drops here or there
but a full-on monsoon would be
too much. Today, when, let’s be
honest, I’m barely keeping it
together. I scan my brain for
some diagnosable source and
then treat and wonder if it’s
the lack of sleep or bad bitter
gas station coffee. Or maybe it’s
driving alone from DC to NY
or leaving my husband for what?
A few days? None of this makes
any sense. Why I’m a mess. In
some sort of pre-verbal age when
all the cries for attention are
ignored only to come out decades
later when you’re driving to NY.
And I wonder if the real problem
is that I’ve read too many self-help
books with ten-step guides to fix your
life and transform your trauma into—
I don’t know, something usable,
or manageable, which might work
for maybe about seven and a half
minutes till you worry whether
you have enough cash and coins
for all the tolls in all the states
you’ll drive through. And you
scream-ask the windshield why
they have tolls anyway? Why
can’t they just raise taxes, but
then you remember that you
don’t even pay takes here.
Because you live in another
country. Where there is a war.
And then you drive in silence,
surprised that the tolls are cheap.
And the sky, while a thick-heavy-grey
never rains. And five hours later
when you’re driving up West 53rd
to drop off the car, you find yourself
honking and swerving, like a
regular New Yorker. And then
you see a poster and remember
the war and feel grateful for 5
hours or maybe a bit less, when
you could forget.
Linger
It’s the one song I can hear the
words to, maybe because the
couple next to me is karaoke-ing
the song, full blast on glasses
of champagne. I stare out the window
the reflection of the neon red heart
that spells love stares back, the words
backwards and I get lost in the words
of the song released the day before
my birthday the year before I lived
in Bath on a hill of fog and too many
hours in echoey libraries alone with
Dostoevsky. And words that disappeared
into nihilistic rabbit holes and words
of songs that sat with me in the
sadnesses I wore like those lead aprons
placed over you in dentists offices before
they zap you with x-rays and rush out
out to avoid impending doom, sadnesses
that stayed for days and her words
her linger her fool for you got me,
and I didn’t have to explain a damn
thing because someone heard me, and
when she died, I cried. Because I think
I understood her sadness. The kind bigger
than words, the kind that even now
as I stare out a Greenwich Village
lesbian bar while my daughter gets me
a white wine and her a gin and tonic
and the ceiling is covered with rainbow
pinata looking decorations and girls
are making out and the gay couple is
shouting about their new puppy, and
the song has moved on to some poppy
Lady Gaga, I feel a tear start to trickle
down my fifty-five-year-old face.
surrender means disassociation
Why not see? Why not ask yourself:
who am I looking for?
Sarah Kay
I am walking in mid-summer, mid-western
green, silent streets, the air thick with wet,
before thunder and rain they expect. So far
from the dust I call home. But haven’t, for
months. Home, where I wipe down
books twice a day, floors more—heavy
with salt and Negev. Here all lush, no fear
of Southern California fines for flushing
too much or watering daisies in drought. Here,
a river gushes down the street as sprinklers
spray Hydrangeas, moments before a storm.
I am listening to a podcast on manifesting.
And I’m all in. Until she says—surrender.
And though I consider myself spiritual, something
about surrender buckles my knees. This word
that means in the lexicon of me—disassociation.
Bruises on my backside and scars on the inside.
Hiding in closets and praying for a savior that
never came. And—it isn’t until October 9, 2023
sitting in the patio of a restaurant. Taking a break
with strangers after stirring pasta for
soldiers down south, sharing how we are coping
when someone uses the word—surrender, and
a psychologist who says she’s from New York
shoots up and says—
you’re not supposed to surrender when you are at war.
That it all – all of a sudden – made sense. Not just
the shakes and sweats and heartbeat in my throat.
Or perceiving sirens and lights in the sky. Not just
the angry man with a beer in his hand. Not just
the tall one with a hollow face and leaden feet. Who
sought me at night. Who found me in the dark places
I’d hide. Where I’d escape to feel safe. To be able to
shut my eyes. At night. And then, try in the light of
day to stop looking over the crick in my neck and
bow my complicit head in—surrender. Instead, on
this mid-western mid-summer mid-morning in
near-rain I can almost taste, I crick my neck up,
sip in the softness of green and the safety of
sidewalks and the beginnings of a sprinkle becoming a storm.
Dr Tara Zafft is the recent Winner of the Moonlit Getaway Poetry Prize. Her work has been published in the anthology, Rumors Secrets and Lies, Poems about Abortion, Pregnancy and Choice, Write-Haus, Aether Avenue Press, The San Diego Poetry Annual, Vita and the Woolf Literary Journal, and Dumbo Press. She received a BA in Russian Literature from UC San Diego and Ph.D. in Modern Languages from the University of Bath, UK. In addition, she regularly teach poetry workshops.
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