Five Poems by Dr Tara Zafft

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.