Sarah Russell Poetry

My poem “Inconvenient Cemetery” was just published in a British poetry anthology called Enclosure, exploring how we partition land for the public good or private use. It’s available on Amazon, and has a wonderful selection of poetry. Here’s my contribution, previously published in Red River Review.

Inconvenient Cemetery

 
At a corner where two 6-lane highways cross
lies a 32-soul cemetery. 
Bindweed crawls on crooked markers
reading Beloved Mother, Cherished Child
Too Soon Gone, R.I.P. George Lindstrom 1842-1905.
Around it sprawls a shopping mall
with Neiman Marcus and Forever 21.
Home Depot is across the street
and a Landmark 12 Screen Cinema’s nearby. 

 Once this was a village crossroads
where The Church of the Nazarene stood. 
Gravestones wore flags and geraniums then.
Kinfolk came to mourn here, and churchfolk
came the day before Palm Sunday with kaiser blades
and trowels so it looked nice for Easter. 

 But the old church burned in ’29, 
and members gravitated to The Church of Christ.
Then the suburbs spread this way, and well,
you know the rest. 

 Developers want the site for Arby’s,
but dead Nazarenes need relatives’ permission,
archeologists and legal briefs to move. 
Not worth the effort, shrugged the planning board. 

 So they’re swapping the rundown Victorian fence— 
iron with rusty curlicues—for a wood one six feet high.
Today they set the posts, and only one guy crossed himself
when a marker that said Always In Our Hearts fell over.

  A privacy fence they call it. 
Once it’s up, we can all get on with life.

My thanks again to Corey Cook and Red Eft Review for publishing “Emergence.”

Today I saw a single silky thread from aspen 
to eaves. I traced it and watched a spider, 
backlit by the sun, weaving precise gossamer 
tendrils, interconnected. There’s a new hatch 
of dragonflies at our pond, the final leg 
of a year’s journey from egg to nymph to adult. 
It’s called Emergence—their last, fruitful days.
It’s what I feel after 80 years—an emergence 
of days, of seasons, each one savored,
and family—eggs, nymphs, adults—the intricacy 
of webs and silken threads.

My poem “Green Tomato Chutney” was just published by Silver Birth Press in their Spices and Seasonings Series. It’s one of my favorite poems, written in real time as I was making my yearly chutney — always one of my favorite fall activities. Here are more of the poems in this wonderful series.

Green Tomato Chutney

Each fall (always by serendipity)
I find green tomatoes at the farmer’s market.
I could order them, of course,
from the Amish in the last stall on the left,
but that would take away the magic.

Picked hastily before first frost,
they nestle with the Brandywines and Early Boys
and take me by surprise.
I smile, my weekend planned, and buy six pounds.
Come Saturday, I’ll make chutney.

Then another sortie through the stalls.
All the parts must be fresh picked—
peppers, patent leather red,
rose-streaked Gala apples,
chubby garlic bulbs,
currants round as BBs,
bunioned ginger toes
and raisins, withered gold.

My basement yields an oddment of jars
and the large blue pot that waits for this occasion.
I whet my favorite knife,
find cutting boards and colanders
and blues on the radio.
The tunes remind me of hard times, when canning
meant peach jam for toast in winter,
and women wore aprons.

I put mine on
(a gift from my husband before he knew better),
wash vegetables, and start to work.
I pare and core and chop and mince,
humming with Muddy Waters, Bessie Smith,
peeling the next apple, and the next.

The blue pot’s almost full—
a kaleidoscope of harvest.
Next comes sugar, tawny with molasses,
then spices—cumin, cinnamon, cayenne,
sea salt, nutmeg, cloves—
riches Marco Polo sought, now
housed in tins at Kroger. I add malt vinegar
and set the blue pot on the stove.

Chutney needs its own heat—
too high will scorch a day’s work;
too low, and it will turn to mush.
I set the flame just so, and change the music—
now conjuring a sultan’s rapture
with a favorite concubine who
doesn’t disappoint, for soon
aromas like a dance of veils, exotic
as Tangiers, fill the room and whisper
secrets of the oda.

I fill the sink to wash the jars,
dry them on white linen towels,
put water in a roasting pan to boil,
once more attend the chutney—
handmaiden to my lady’s whims—stirring,
steeped in fragrance as the liquid turns to syrup,
as raisins plump and currants soften.

Alchemy achieved, at last the chutney’s ladled
into jars and bathed—
a purifying rite.
The blue pot’s washed, its task complete.
The jars come out with tongs
to rest again on linen towels—
three rows of five to give to friends
and bring the Silk Road to our table.

I pour a cup of tea, listen for
the soft, inverse pop, pop of lids
sealing in the fantasies.

First published in Loyalhanna Review

My thanks to editor James E. Lewis for publishing 3 of my poems in Verse-Virtual. I’ll post them in the next 3 days, but to read all the poems in this issue, from some very fine poets, go to https://www.verse-virtual.org.

After Grandma died
I cleared out her old veneered dresser and vanity
with its huge round mirror. Slips, girdles, garters,
and seamed stockings rolled in plum-sized balls.
A nightgown I’d given her still had the tags
and tissue. She did that—saved things for “good,”
even a nightie, I guess. She kept a hoard of aprons—
stained, sturdy cotton for every day, flounced organdy
for serving guests — along with white gloves for church,
pocketbooks, and a drab felt hat with feather and veil.

When I opened the vanity’s low middle drawer,
it held a whisper of Chanel and hankies—
thirty or more—ironed, folded in half and half
again, cotton so fine it might dab away a tear
but could never tend a good cry. Hankies
with scalloped edges, embroidered pansies,
set-in lace, and for Christmas, poinsettias
and candy canes. Grandma always kept one
tucked inside her sleeve. I never saw her use it,
but she had one, just in case.