Dzanc Books Best of the Web Nominees, 2010
The Telling Signs
from a cover photograph from The Telling Signs, by Susan Moon
I know too much
about dusty sage, the open howl
of wind, and the dry grasshoppers
that pop against my skirt.
This world is scorched yellow-gray
and grave markers tilt
like heavy petals on the hill.
How can a body keep
anything under this sky--a blue bowl
of unmeasured
fire. The buckets of water
drip in double lines behind me.
A turkey vulture shadow
crosses me,
cuts the glare and is gone.
Tumble weed
wheel away. (Sometimes
I ink prayers on torn strips of muslin
and tie them to the branches
to carry away.)
I look down. Burrs grip
and drag the edge of my hem,
the tear in my apron
like children. My bones hollow
for the sight of another woman.
Laura L. Snyder keeps a slanted profile in Seattle so weighted words pour out in nasty weather. Find her most recent writing in Wazee, Cascade Journal, Ekphrasis, Alimentum Journal, Oracle, Pontoon #9, Switched-on Gutenberg, Chrysanthemum and Moon Journal. You'll find her with an open journal in art museums and wherever trees and bears hang out.
Where Wild Poisonous Mushrooms Grow
The rosewood piano watches me
empty mahogany end table drawers
and pack heirlooms in four opened
cedar chests, side by side on the living room floor _
each with the name of a different family member.
Everyone knows the spinet is mine
and the crushed velvet cherry chair--
where she critiqued my practice.
The walnut music clock (who's hands I moved
to prove an hour had passed, all my scales
rehearsed and perfected: a transparent lie)
waits patiently as if holding its breath,
stopped on 8:36.
The fig tree peeks in my bedroom window,
looks at the unblinking wide-eyed dolls
in the cabinet Granddaddy made
from left-over oak floorboards. Its aged limbs
scratch the screen to get my attention.
We grew up together. Its roots crowd the foundation,
but I imagine mine have cracked the mortar.
Age and responsibility has ripped me
from my childhood home, while the fig tree
bears more fruit each season. I sit on the edge of the bed,
look at the dolls I had hoped to pass down to a daughter,
my forty-year old hand shields a belly
where a shriveled uterus hides its face in shame.
I know the fig tree understands my pain,
leaves fall from its drooping branches.
Yes, this is how it feels to be deciduous--
looking down the barrel of winter's gun,
knowing it's hunting season, wondering if you can out-run
predators and cold, burrow into a cave, hibernate,
or survive at all.
Our family has fallen like a giant redwood
uprooted in a flash flood: an unexpected deluge
after a long drought.
We are scattered, broken,
empty pecan shells on the vacant lawn.
It took decades before that tree could produce
anything fit to eat; and we've let the squirrels feast
while rot rapes the rest. We mark our own territories,
as my uncle pounds the for-sale sign in the front yard
like a stake through the heart. We are motherless
and hollow as the decayed stump
where wild poisonous mushrooms grow.
Paula Ray is a musician and emerging writer from North Carolina, where she teaches band, composes, gigs about town on her saxophone, and writes. Her poems and stories have appeared or are forthcoming in: Word Riot, Pequin, Up the Staircase, Mad Swirl, The Orange Room Review, Oak Bend Review, Dew on the Kudzu, MicroHorror, and Yellow Mama. She is the blogger behind musicalpencil.blogspot.com
Blossoms & Jam, Maybe Wine
I.
A plum tree blossoms
in my yard with promise
of purple globes forming.
Later this summer their sweet juice
will pool between my lips
as I stand over the kitchen sink
to catch ripe liquid.
But today I buy Welch’s Grape Jam.
Jellies do not fill my mouth with thick texture.
Jelly is translucent, only a hint of fruit
like blossoms’ scent.
As I heap jam on bread, I imagine
myself on my Sicilian family’s grape farm,
my grandfather, Sebastian, scolding me
for tasting too many Concord grapes,
my cheeks sticky with the tart purple.
II.
Early on, raised by fields of grain & corn, I found
in the top of Mother’s dresser photos & old postcards
from Portland and Brocton of family & neighbors,
their wagons heaped with grape baskets—
loading the train, fruit shipped to the Welch factory.
Grandpa Sebastian, a black-and-white photo,
kept back some grapes for Aunt Mary to make wine,
give to the nuns for the parish communion.
I would sip that wine made by a dear Aunt’s hands.
At sixteen, I make my first return visit East. Aunt Mary
brings me Bing cherries when she comes from Jersey City.
She speaks with Italian’s rapid flowing meaning
to an acquaintance on a corner. I visit her sewing job.
I meet my Father. I become ill and burn with fever.
So much openness in a place of small box rooms.
So much chatter, warm browns and smiling faces.
I want to be one of the photos in the pile, beautiful
and dark. I wash my long blonde hair from
my German mother. I’m greeted as the long lost cousin.
Two Aunts and I drive upstate New York,
so I can see the Belardi land, the grape fields overgrown.
Out of Buffalo I fly west again to Minnesota.
III.
As fruit ripens in its season, my brother & I age
into features more like our full-blooded cousins.
My sister was always dark haired and olive-skinned;
she sews beautifully like Aunt Mary.
My brother and I spill words. At a Belardi reunion by Lake Erie,
my sister-in-law tires from the rush of endless words
piling, heaping through the room. They are grapes I hungrily eat.
Mary Belardi Erickson originated from Passaic, New Jersey and lives today in West Central Minnesota. Since childhood, poetry has been her continued passion--reading others' poems and writing her own. She has a BA from Augsburg College and a MA from Drake University. She has been a teacher. Now, she helps disabled people and is also a volunteer musician, playing clarinet. Recent publications are Winter 2008 in Farming Magazine and Summer 2009 in Avocet.
