I’ll be part of a Zoom poetry reading with a grand list of poets on Saturday, July 20 at 2pm MST. I hope you can join us. Details about how to register are at the bottom of the poster.
Poetry Reading Saturday
Author: Sarah Russell
Retired professor and editor, now writing poetry and short fiction.
Harbor Woman
The third poem published in the wonderful Rusty Truck this week.
Harbor Woman
She takes them in — the peddler,
minstrel, gypsy. Townsfolk speak
in wanton whispers, how she beds
each one. They rebuke their budding
daughters who mime her loose-hipped
stroll. Addled by her lustered hair, full lips,
boys are whipped for where their hands go
in the night. But the same wives who beat
their sons, go in darkness for her herbs
so they will bleed again. Men, lured by musk
and breasts that push beneath her shawl,
dream her while astride those dowdy wives,
conjure her cries in their grinding. Beside
her hearth, sojourners tell of war and greed
and mutiny, of realms where she could dance
for kings, wear silks, call maids to brush her hair.
They tempt her to break free, but she knows
her place is here, knows she is the wellspring
of sweet water for parched village tongues.
Havana
Here is the second poem published by Rusty Truck.
Havana
Early morning on the wharf, sharing a thermos
with Juan Pablo. He’s brown and scuffed
as old boots, tough like that too, eyes squinted
with age and sun. He knows the ocean
like his woman’s face, reads stars, wind,
waves, like poems. He’s mending a net, hands
stiff and scarred, sorting gnarls and frays,
ash falling from a Camel held square
between his teeth. A tourist interrupts,
though no one’s talking, wants to hire
the boat to fish tarpon. Juan Pablo grunts
and nods toward a salt-soaked sign
with hourly rates. The guy says he’ll be back
with his wife and kid. Juan Pablo watches him
stride toward a hotel, New York cadence
out of step with the lap of water on pilings.
He snorts, then gathers up the net, half done,
stands with a stumble to favor his bum knee.
He jerks his head toward the seamless join
of sea and sky. C’mon, he says, taking the stub
of Camel and grinding it under his heel.
That cabrón can hire another boat.
All that Remains
Just had THREE poems picked up at the wonderful Rusty Truck. Thanks, Scot! Here’s the first one.
All that Remains
I rush upstairs when it starts, rain and wind
pummeling the old apple tree, branches cracking.
I had opened the windows wide this morning—
airing out, Mom called it—letting the stale of winter
escape into April. Now this—a storm threshing
the forsythia, shredding yellow blossoms on the lawn.
The landscape blurs through windows as I close them,
drops filling small pores in the screens, collecting dust
in muddy puddles on the sill. There’d been a storm like this
the day Mom was buried. It hurried the pastor’s homily,
made a mire of dirt, fresh-turned beside the grave. I thought
how Dad and I were like the gray, beading drops as we stood
bare-headed, not touching; how we evaporated that day
leaving only grime on the sill.
Thinking About Faith
My poem is up at the wonderful Poetry Breakfast this morning. My thanks to editor Kay Kestner.
Thinking about Faith
I’m not talking religion here,
although it’s nice to have that too.
I’m thinking of the sun-rising-every-day
kind of faith we take for granted—
that cars coming at me will stay
in their lanes, that planes
will land. It’s deeper than expectation—
that the dinner party will go well,
or the Amazon delivery will arrive
on Tuesday. It’s more akin
to assurance—that when my friend
says she understands, she does.
Faith is more solid than Emily’s hope,
more bedrock, but it’s beautiful
like her feathery allusion—
that you’ll come home every evening,
that we will share our day,
that you will hold my hand.
Mother’s Recipe Box
My thanks to Your Daily Poem for publishing my poem this morning as part of their Poetry Parade for Poetry Month.
Mother’s Recipe Box
Friday night baked beans with salt pork, molasses,
and just enough water to keep them covered,
simmering in the bean pot her mother used.
Refrigerator rolls, dusted with flour, punched down,
rolled out to rise again as doughnuts, cloverleaf rolls
for company, hamburger buns for picnics. The dough
kept a week in a big bowl covered with wax paper
that took up most of a shelf in the icebox, its recipe card
with Mother’s school teacher penmanship, splotched
from yeasty hands and buttered fingers. And oh my,
the Jello concoctions—celery, slivered carrots
and pineapple in jiggly lime or orange with a mayo
and sour cream topping. And the congealed
Christmas staple of cranberries from the grinder
with orange bits and that ubiquitous celery.
Some of the cards have friends’ names—Hilda’s cherry pie,
Wilma’s meatloaf. Some have culinary graphics in a corner—
wooden spoons, checked aprons, Italian chefs winking.
My daughter asked for the box awhile back. It blesses
her kitchen from a high shelf. I doubt she has ever used
the recipes, but she knows its legacy, its secrets.
Enclosure
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.
Emergence
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.
Autumn
My thanks again to Corey Cook, who took 3 of my poems to publish in Red Eft Review. Here’s the second one.
Autumn
Sugar maples are the first to turn,
mottled orange and scarlet with the green,
trying on the season. I need a sweater
now for morning walks.
The geese abandon summer ponds
in keening, migrant skeins to follow
shorelines south.
In twilight, remnant fireflies
glint urgent calls to mate, hopeful,
as we are, for one last tryst
before winter.
Ode to my Purse
My thanks to Corey Cook, editor at Red Eft Review for publishing this poem.
The one that’s 10 years old —
its leather soiled and supple,
lining grayed by a thousand
ins and outs of billfolds, keys,
candy. The purse fits me,
softening with use, sagging
into the middle of itself, scarred
by day to day, but refusing
to concede to age, zippers
still meshing, handle still
carrying its weight, stitching
still strong.
Sarah Russell Poetry 