Linda Nemec Foster
|
Conjuring Her Face The famous artist from Serbia says she looks familiar: he’s seen her face in a Belgrade café. She’s never been to Belgrade. “That doesn’t matter,” he replies. He’s seen her face—the square jaw, the high cheekbones, the way her eyes scan a room for the nearest exit. He’s sketched her a hundred times sipping strong black tea in glass cups, poring over a literary journal filled with oblique poems, impatiently waiting for her lover to stop talking on his cell phone. He’s conjured her face with light pastels and translucent watercolours, layered acrylics and misted charcoal, blue pen and sharp pencil. He’s memorized every nuance of her expression, every outline she exhales on the pages of his sketchbook. “Look at these,” he shows her, “I know you.” Eventually, she starts to believe the evidence. As if she never lived her life, as if the blood of her ancestors never left his country. ** This prose poem was first published in KYSO Flash and included in the author's collection, Bone Country (Cornerstone Press.) It was nominated for the Best Microfiction Anthology. ** Indigo Sky Above Spain This morning, clouds spilled from the top of the Sierra Centrales and she remembered the dream she had last night. A childless friend she’s known for years finally becomes pregnant. A pink bassinet waiting in the hallway. The husband appears in the background reciting the mantra: “bigger house, bigger house, bigger house.” Meanwhile, the road outside their small apartment transforms itself into a long gray ribbon bordered by gorse. The brilliant yellow flowers held in place by tangled branches of thorns. Their scent is like the vague memory of loosestrife, black-eyed Susan, evening primrose that the woman left back home. The night after witnessing her first bullfight in Seville, she drinks sangria until dawn in a small bar on Calle Arfe. Alone. Quiet. Undisturbed. The locals give her wide berth and cross themselves when passing. Perhaps she is the reincarnation of Carmen returning to haunt their nights. When she finally collapses into her small hotel bed, she dreams of the bullfighter caressing the bull. The horns barely touching the man’s body. His cape exploding over the bull’s head like a huge blossom of colour. Gold, fuchsia, and magenta falling like petals into the open mouths of the amazed tourists. The last dream before she leaves. The delicate hands of the flamenco dancer who commutes every day from the small village in the Andalusia hills. His narrow, intense face is lost in duende; he doesn’t even notice her, with her rouge and lip gloss. Another anonymous face in the audience. He is pure gypsy and has the olive skin, long hair, and black eyes to prove it. She has nothing but a faded passport and a husband sleeping alone on the other side of the world. Not even the moon bothers to appear in the indigo sky. Stars shape a new constellation from a myth she will forget by morning. ** This prose poem was first published in MacQueen's Quinterly and included in the author's collection, Bone Country (Cornerstone Press.) ** The Cemeteries Near the Ukrainian Border The dead are orthodox. They want cut flowers arranged in perfect bouquets above their hearts and freshly starched bows of white linen attached to their gravestones. Even the mourners have to pay attention to protocol. Heads must be covered, hands folded in prayer, no distracted gazes to the right or the left. The dead are always in your face, up close and personal. “Don’t you dare forget us,” they demand. And the old women near the Ukrainian border never do. On market day they buy extra bread then cross the San River to the cemeteries. They cover their gray hair, anticipate rain. Toss small crumbs filled with rye and poppy seed amidst the crowded crosses, the rusting crucifixes nailed to trees. They watch the blackbirds take the bread to heaven and pray that the dead will eat and be satisfied. ** This prose poem was first published in Dunes Review and included in the author's collection, Bone Country (Cornerstone Press.) ** False Spring: After Follain They almost believe it: this warm air caressing their faces. The calendar with its languid rows of days whispers late January, but the lovers have forgotten what season it is. As if Time was willing to walk anywhere in his sad, black shoes just for them. What they think they see is each other; what they really see is a transfigured memory of a reclining nude. The head erased by desire, the torso ready to be framed like a black and white photograph. Silver nitrate so exact that even the birds are duped. And robins take on the sleek distance of a premature flight to view the lovers in their public display. In their car they move dangerously closer together, opening and closing their mouths, saying nothing, breathing silence. In the car in front of them, a woman still in winter sees the lovers in her rearview mirror. Two dark shapes huddled in the small rectangle of light. Somewhere behind the faceless clouds, the sun attempts to pantomime its resurrection. ** This piece was first published in The Prose Poem and included in the author's collection, Talking Diamonds (New Issues Press.) ** Arriving at the Train Station, the Last Place I Saw Lara Alive It looks the same, but it doesn’t. Death clouds the eyes— not with tears—but with the fog that comes with loss. You can see the train platform still there in the centre of Vienna, in the center of Europe. But the faces are different: hers, gone. Look...she was young, younger than me in her yellow linen dress, the colour of a muted Viennese sun, and her fashionable white hat. Her husband, the distracted older man, was standing with her on the platform waving goodbye. That was then. Years ago, when she could still lift her arm in welcome or farewell. Now, no trace of our embrace at the station. The sleeveless summer dress, the pale arms. The spacious apartment she slept in, on the street where a deaf Beethoven composed his last symphony. Now, it’s vacant and empty. All part of memory’s passing blur. The train arrives, the train departs. The city remains. Only the faces have changed. Her husband has moved on to another station. And I (the friend left behind)—I, too, have moved on: the passenger lost in fog. ** This prose poem was first published in Paterson Literary Review and included in the author's collection, Bone Country (Cornerstone Press.) ** On the Other Side of the World After the Funeral in Seville Two sisters go to a flamenco bar after they bury their father. They sit silently with their cool Agua de Valencia and watch each dancer as if they’ve forgotten sorrow and all its mismatched relatives: grief, mourning, the black scarf with white pearls. They’re only aware of the dancers’ feet pounding the floor, the insistent guitar, the bare arms twisting like branches of a willow tree. Each branch ends in a flurry of leaves. Each leaf cradles the twin shells of castanets. Their dark, ebony faces. Statue of a Woman with Broken Serpents Embracing Her She’s totally forgotten in this Kraków park with its endless parade of harried students clutching cell phones and stoic grandmothers carrying plastic bags filled with potatoes, fresh dill, and coarse salt. Nothing harried, nothing stoic about her: the Anonymous Woman cloaked in the blue patina of broken serpents. They cover her breasts and pubis, thighs and feet. The Madonna of the Underworld? The Anti-Virgin of What is Holy? Even the sculptor refused to name her. Keeps her eyes open, her mouth closed. The Train Station, Vienna The old woman wears a fashionable purple beret and collects free newspapers from three different kiosks in Vienna’s main train station. She would be a bag lady in the States, but her scarf is too perfect. Its universe is serenaded by flocks of black starlings perched on bright yellow trees. What more can be said about the landscape she wears around her neck? Or the man on the train passing into the night who sees it? The Horseradish Dish Somewhere in Bucharest or Budapest (a place Americans can’t find on a map) she finds the one restaurant that serves fresh grated white horseradish. When the waiter brings the spice to her table, she’s startled to find its pungent fragrance trapped in a little coffin of pure glass. “Be careful,” the waiter whispers, “what you wish for.” ** This piece won second prize in a contest sponsored by Fish Publishing in Ireland and was first published in the Fish Anthology. It was included in the author's collection, Bone Country (Cornerstone Press.) ** The Night’s Blue Bowl My first night home, I dreamt of you and your daughter. Happy and reconciled after so many years of forced silence. Unlike the waking world where a whole ocean separates you: mother on an island surrounded by aquamarine; daughter far away on a thin peninsula of intangible green. The muted gray of air, your only common denominator. But, in the dream’s world, the landscape’s edges fall away, leaving nothing but dusk. Bird song. Thin burst of sunset. Deep cobalt of the night’s blue bowl. Laughter. A young girl quietly holding your hand. A single line of pure horizon connecting everything. ** This prose poem was first published in MacQueen's Quinterly and included in the author's collection, Bone Country (Cornerstone Press.) ** Linda Nemec Foster has published over ten collections of poetry including Amber Necklace from Gdansk (finalist for the Ohioana Book Award), Talking Diamonds, The Blue Divide, Bone Country, and The Lake Michigan Mermaid (2019 Michigan Notable Book). Her work has appeared in numerous journals such as Witness, Paterson Literary Review, The Georgia Review, Nimrod, New American Writing, and North American Review. She has received Pushcart Prize nominations and awards from the National Writers Voice, Fish Anthology (Ireland), The Poetry Center (NJ), and the Academy of American Poets. Foster was the inaugural poet laureate of Grand Rapids, MI (2003-05) and is the founder of the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College. http://www.lindanemecfoster.com |
|
