Trending »

TWO POEMS – Martina Reisz Newberry

on March 15 | in Poetry | by | with No Comments

AS A GHOST I’LL MAKE SURE THAT YOU’LL KEEP ON RUNNING INTO ME
BACK AND FORTH, IN SOME SHAPE AND FORM WE WILL BE…”

 

I think she was hoping he was really
a gardener.
It is easier to greet a stranger
than a friend when your eyes are puffed and red
from weeping; your nose and lips swelled with grief.

 

(She dreamed, the night before, about eating
the last of some dark, sweet dates – soft salted
with tears – as her world lost color, lost warmth,
lost light. She ate dates in that dream as fast
as she could to enjoy as many as
possible before the dark world ended.)

So, it was better to see a gardener
in front of her, a spade in one hand and

 

the smell of earth around him.
Here was a man to explain:

 

A question or two, Sir…where there was stone,
now there is space, cool, dark, empty. Where there
was a dead man, there are rags on the floor.
Tell me, where have they taken the body?

 

She is calmer than when she first arrived.
And now she notices. She notices.

 


LAVENDER BLUE

 

Yesterday, when the rain began, I saw it was rain from the past.
There was a seizure of wind and then a deluge in earnest.
In that past rain, I had a raincoat, lavender blue in color
(dilly dilly)

 

and the rain held delicious secrets which I cherished.
Now, I want only the sun. It was a shock when I realized it–
only the sun–and long days full with Spring and Summer songs.

 

Do the years turn lavender blue raincoats into a kind of sepulchre,
one that embraces then imprisons what was cherished?
I think so. I was a princess then, wore clear plastic boots

 

over my shoes and put out my tongue to catch rain.
“Don’t do that” a man told me. “It’s too sexy. Makes me hard.”
That was the rain back then–cold and strange on the tongue

 

and safe to rest my lashes in. What is safe now?
When this rain from the past began, all places looked
alike to me. After this, perhaps not so much…

 

Inspired by the Song: “Lavender Blue,”
music and lyrics by Larry Morey and Eliot Daniel, 1948

 

Martina Reisz Newberry’s most recent book is NEVER COMPLETELY AWAKE (Deerbrook Editions). She is also the author of WHERE IT GOES (Deerbrook Editions). LEARNING BY ROTE (Deerbrook Editions) and RUNNING LIKE A WOMAN WITH HER HAIR ON FIRE: Collected Poems (Red Hen Press), and LIMA BEANS AND CITY CHICKEN: MEMORIES OF THE OPEN HEARTH—a memoir of her father, (one of the first men ever to be hired at Kaiser Steel in Fontana, CA in 1943)—published by E.P. Dutton and Co. in 1989.

Newberry has been included in It Happened Under Cover, Ascent Aspirations’ first two hard-copy anthologies, also in the anthologies In The Company Of Women, Blessed Are These Hands and Veils, and Halos & Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women. She has been widely published in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad.

She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo Colony for the Arts, Djerassi Colony for the Arts, and Anderson Center for Disciplinary Arts. Passionate in her love for Los Angeles, Martina currently lives there with her husband, Brian, a Media Creative.

Pin It

Related Posts

« »

Recent Posts

News

THE SACRED GROVE –  [...]

[new_royalslider id="17"] Ana Flores is a sculptor and ecologist. Her work is informed by how pla

Safia Elhilo

2 Poems

Michele Robinson\'s Art [...]

Let Me Straddle Your Mind

X.J. Kennedy

The Crusader

Why did you leave bring m [...]

Yeah bring our electric shaver back, I bought it we shaved each others back it was important to me

Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes

BEFORE YOU – Kwame  [...]

1 Yes, we were country, lived in shotgun shacks, where the road loses its way to dirt and live

MENSTRUAL FLOWERS – [...]

[new_royalslider id="11"] Courtesy of the artist and Mizuma Art Gallery  

WHAT THE WOMB ISN’T [...]

         "Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to lea

JUNOT DIAZ

Junot' Diaz and Edison, NJ

EDISON, NEW JERSEY – [...]

The first time we try to deliver the Gold Crown the lights are on in the house but no on

Rachel Eliza Griffiths [...]

Elegy & Poem

The March on Washington:  [...]

OTHER WORLD: A Conversati [...]

"We are all the other."

I OPEN A BOX

…and find inside a picture, of myself as a child, sitting on a small chair, wearing overalls an

Naive Paintings

Raphael Perez

CIRCLES OF THE MOON & [...]

To Alex, on turning two Some say the Ring of Brogar is the Circle of the Moon. There is n

In This Issue

March on Washington An Interview with Cheryl Evans

5 POINTZ: GRAFFITI MECCA  [...]

In a strange twist of what seemed like reverse vandalism, the Graffiti Mecca was painted over.

In This Issue

Forest Gander A Translation

In This Issue

Quassan Castro, poem Grandson to Grandmother

URBAN CANVAS: Wynwood Wal [...]

Wynwood Walls, of Miami has been called "a Museum of the Streets."

Pulaski Skyway

Low like the mean dream of Newark the sky must have seemed to its builders. Rickety now, unhingin

THE SPAN & OTHER POE [...]

At last, the extremes of his present methods seemed to offer the happiest avenues. The strengthe

Paul Latorre

5th Limb Poems

Joan Larkin

Poem, Knot

Gina Loring, Def Poetry [...]

Poem, Look This Way

In This Issue

Xue Du, Poem

AT THE END OF THE DREAM I [...]

A woman      in a black kimono      dyed black hair disappeared      behind a black curtai

Marge Piercy

Poem: Behind the War On Women

Naive Paintings

Raphael Perez

Marie Miazziotti -Gillam [...]

Maria Mizzotti-Gillan

Vicky Dantel

Short Story

In This Issue

Pilar Fraile Amador poem

Quassan Castro

Poem

Lugensky Durosier [...]

Lady Haiti

In This Issue

David Trinidad

In This Issue

Landzy Theodore

In This Issue

Angelo Nikolopoulos

Scroll to top