Karen Neuberg
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Changing Coats
You might begin with yourself wearing a red parka and playing in heaps of snow and immediately transfer into the school yard where you’ve undone your overcoat’s top buttons despite the brisk wind. Here is where you don’t know something about to happen never does, at least not in memory. But, how you had wished for it at the time, held your breath. Anticipation making you someone else while it lasted. ** This poem previously appeared in Clockwise Cat, and in the author’s chapbook, Detailed Still (Poets Wear Prada.) ** Couldn’t Be More And I awaken into the seed’s dream, into the bud’s vision, to become a flower among flowers within a cluster of flowers just as wind lifts my petals off in several directions at once so that I find myself trembling across a southern province of China while tumbling over Mexico in a piñata’s sweet release. My petals are taken between a child’s fingers and smoothed across her cheek, then stuck to her nose just briefly, before I return to find I am my own clenched teeth in a mouth pursed in judgment. How to open out of it, and again, when my attempts do not lie content but are a winding road switchbacking up a mountain whose apex is lost in fog. And I use deep breath to shift ajar the door of my line of vision’s fraction, and on entering, I do let go. Even a flower couldn’t be more open. ** This poem first appeared in Menacing Hedge, and in the author’s collection PURSUIT (Kelsay Press.) ** Walking Toward the marrow of mystery as it shouts to me, hurry!; but my legs, my heart, oh, the things I need to bring along slowing me down—how can I let go of the house with my mother and father, the talk at the table, my brother and I looking into the microscope, or my early life after, that house, that young couple, that child, those cuddles, our continuing love still walking beside me as he, too, carries the house of his childhood along with all we’ve had together and I don’t want to hurry, I want to linger, stroll, hold hands, reminisce and point out nuances of light, of sound, of the familiar and unfamiliar; but I know, we both know, we must keep walking. ** After On heading out, I was only interested in a next I couldn’t envision but wanted. There was a fog I had to pass through. A wall with pictographs I couldn’t decipher. A darkness I avoided. A book caught me in the rye. I didn’t turn any corner down. When I couldn’t undo the lengthening tether, I tore it in two. My half trailed almost to the ground. Later, I used it to make a lariat to catch what was left of what I had left, drag it all back. A girl I barely knew came with it. ** This poem first appeared in Gone Lawn. ** the moment went crystal cathedral —title from a line in Dianne Seuss’s poem “Gertrude Stein” and I saw I became a clear whistle of self and feeling dangerously close to shattering if a storm carried anything, even a pebble. And I saw rows of pews within me filled with ancestors on one side and progeny on the other, as if at a wedding and both sides of family were past and future, while we, the present ones, the ones of the now, were all clustered up front, holding each other up, if needed, or running around, especially the children. And I saw the multitude of us swimming in a river that ran like a fuselage across the plains of time which were cluttered with houses of worship and burial grounds and the remnants of wars and the fields of peace, gleaners at the edges, harvesting the remainders. I saw the good and the not good of time. Saw time’s oneness with the universe. And the crystal cathedral became clear and the sun poured through in straight lines housing the tiny dust motes, the litter of stars and time. And in a moment of oneness, we all rose and joined hands. And sang our songs which were filled with notes so high, the glass in the crystal cathedral cracked and slowly fell around us—and this is the strange part, yes this part is strange—it did not fall in shards, but as seeds. And as we watched, the seeds covered themselves with the waiting soil, and we watched some more and the seeds germinated and through the soil, the first leaves were thrust. And we continued to watch time at work even as we moved in our own time. ** This first appeared in Unbroken Journal. ** The Story of My Story Over time, some of the pages of my story have detached. They fly in the wind and sometimes land at my feet. Too often, I inadvertently step on them and keep going. When rain plasters them to my window, the ink runs. Sometimes, I see my story in my mirror. Crooked teeth. Grey brows. I run my story down a page. It weeps a newer sorrow. Picks the lint of loss. Fluffs it into a pillow. I sleep on my story. I sleep in it. It sleeps in me. It buries itself in me. My story has become quiet. Has become mystery. I have to beg it to share itself, to share those exciting bits that had me hanging by my fingertips over ledges of want, over desire, over my adventures of accumulation and achievements and failures. Of walks by the frozen lakes. And weaving through crowded city streets. There are a million viewed trees in my story. And a million lights seen in houses and apartments. My story has become the impression of all that has happened more than what has actually happened. ** This poem first appeared in Gone Lawn. ** My Mother’s Lipstick The first time I wore my mother’s lipstick was for a dance recital I was in. Age 12, still a tomboy, I was just starting to feel puberty but didn’t quite know it. My mother set my long, straight hair in rag curlers; and when removed, my hair looked lustrous and wavy. I wore a costume she had sewn—bare-shoulders, crinoline skirt inches above my knees, glittery, satiny. She applied the lipstick, thick and rose red. Finished, I looked 17, looked like a 1940s movie star—and I was half excited and half scared. ** Karen Neuberg is the author of the full-length poetry collection, PURSUIT (Kelsay Press) and three chapbooks including the elephants are asking (Glass Lyre) Her poetry has appeared in Canary, The Ekphrastic Review, Nixes Mate, Unlikely Stories, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. |
