​sense memory
 
Waking without you, the dog and I head out for her morning walk. I squeeze the phone so tightly my ring finger bruises. Waiting, for the call about your surgery. Returning, still no word. I enter our bedroom and open your closet doors. Pants, shorts, shirts--stacked neatly by garment type and colour—confront me.
 
precision folds
your attention to detail
pieces of you
 
I cover my face with your pajama bottoms, inhale your light cedar scent, traces of our streamside sauna just one week ago. 
 
Not knowing.
 
unleashed floods
                    waters rage
holding onto you
 
**

sheer beauty 
 
rough and ready
clarity of the Sky Lakes
we swim with frogs
 
Acquiring our property upstate in 1990 secures our future salvation. Over time we adorn the house with classic Adirondack features to create our own “great camp.” We hike from it along nature’s trails, top the ridge, wind down to the Saunderskill stream and end up at our sauna.   
 
a fork in the birch
deer and wild turkey 
our nosy neighbours
 
I study you over time as you examine nature. Your fascination dates back to childhood when your oldest brother, high school science teacher and mycologist, lures you into the world of fungi and slime molds.  Our moist forested floor sends you back to an exciting, simpler time.
 
rich decay
your outdoor experiment
the cycle of life 
 
With your accident—and with the COVID-19 pandemic brewing around us—images of woodlands become an even more sustaining reserve. 
 
to stand with trees
mychorrizal networks
and glacial scratches
 
**

honour the front line 
 
Walks to the hospital offer miles of mindful meditation. Time to reflect on our many years together. As I journey across town in an unfolding pandemic horror film, I pass through the theatre district, where we have together been entertained by live performance. 
 
the drama of contagion
and marquees extinguished
Broadway shut tight
 
Each time I pass the entrance of the hospital, my eyes land on powerful multi-colored sentiments. Chalked on sidewalks by fans of healthcare workers, simple truths and uplifting calls to action:
​ 
                                              behind each dark cloud
                                           the sun waiting to break free
 
This intentional community of hope raises my spirits.
 
                                        if you don’t see light, be light
 
At 7 pm each evening, NYC steps outside onto sidewalks, balconies, and terraces to herald healthcare workers who show up, take care of the ill and put themselves at risk. As New Yorkers clang pots, clap and shout, I think of you. My husband-doctor, now intensive care patient.
 
a call to heal 
din of metal colanders
ad-hoc orchestra
 
**
 
Keeping Score
 
Has it all come down to this? After a lifetime of quantifying success against an arbitrary goal. To achieve, whatever the cost. A competitive nature, I prefer victory to failure.
 
Retired and sixty-six, I see my oncologist monthly. Just when I’d hoped to be free from success by someone else’s calculation, I’m checking for lab results in my electronic medical record to forecast the future. 
 
Yesterday I learn that my numbers are climbing up.
 
heads or tails 
win, lose or draw
the taste of sky
 
Today we enjoy a leisurely lunch at a trattoria on Restaurant Row in New York. Then stroll to our Broadway Matinee through a frenetic Times Square. A friend eagerly asks the question, one that feels more like an indictment.
 
Everything good with your cancer? 
 
I shut down.
 
Don’t want to talk about it.
 
skimming stones
bounce across the surface
then sink
 
Even at this point in life, I am still not sure what counts.  In spite of illness, I refuse to be defined by it. I remind myself often that my husband and I have built a wonderful life together.
 
touched by rain drops
and mountain laurel blossoms
moss shifts underfoot
 
**
 
This poem was first published in Pulse Voices.

**

I recount, we re-live
 
We acquire our upstate woodland property in 1990. As we meander with abandon through the forest, we grow through shared wonder. Discover local flora and fauna, as if walking through the lens of Ansel Adams. Our shoulders brush wispy white northern pines while moss-capped rocks point the way. Lulled by the percussive timpani of a woodpecker’s swift beat on a felled oak, we are cleansed by sounds of the Saunderskill streambed. Waters dance around rocks, down granite chutes and beckon us onwards. And often inwards.
 
We lose sight of each other. I turn to find you, on hands and knees, examining slime molds. Dangling a red newt, as if to lower its tail into your wide-open grin, eyeballs crossing. Or sniffing the wintergreen leaf you’ve just torn in two, making me a scented offering. You study a pink and chartreuse jack-in-the-pulpit and its champagne-flute contours. 
 
As years pass, we grow wiser and older. Steep climbs, leaps and deep dives become careful steps along the path and toes into the water. Then your mountain bike accident, five years ago. Both of us stopped us in our tracks.
 
glacial scratches
      up and down my spine
a lone eagle soaring
 
Our woods off-limits to you, I lose my bearings. Cannot or will not witness such wonder alone. It’s as though my senses for the cliffs, streambed, trails, wildlife have all been muted. I deny myself pleasure where you have lost feeling. 
 
blinded 
    you urge me 
to wander
 
Until we adopt a dog. Leo and I hike nearly each day. Spry and strong, he leaps and lurches, snapping me into right here, right now. Forces me to attend to branches that might scratch, roots that might trip. 
 
I return with photos and videos to share. Our rediscovered joy.
 
together we find
     our place  
on this earth
 
**
​
passing through
 
Our first day of vacation, we walk through the town to get to the trailhead. Past tiny street-side stores and family-run limoncello laboratori. Next, a thirteenth century paper mill, the first in Italy to produce hand-printed paper. The ascent to Ravello includes more than a kilometre of stone steps. Connected by paths through scented lemon and silvery olive groves. Each view offers Mediterranean cliffs, sea and shade from burning mid-day sun. Just past mid-point, we stop to complain of unexpected fatigue and are passed by a nonna forging up a long flight of stone steps. Carrying three bags of groceries, she offers buongiorno as she speeds by. Later we enjoy a good laugh and a glass wine at a trattoria in Ravello. For the return, a guilt-free taxi. 
 
to trod
civilizations
we two
one step 
at a time
 
The next day we walk down to the hotel’s spiaggia, which involves hundreds of steps winding through the terraced landscape. We pass flower gardens filled with blooming wisteria and oleander until we stumble upon the kitchen’s vegetable garden. Admiring tomatoes, spinaci, beans, lemon trees, our eyes land on the arugula. We pick a stem and seconds later hear “Bah.” A moment after that, “Baaaaaah.” As we proceed, we are greeted by two sturdy goats nestled in the rock, behind a rustic gate. To express our gratitude, we pick a few more leafy morsels, careful to leave enough for the pizza con rucola, mozzarella e prosciutto we intend to order for lunch later that day at the seaside al fresco trattoria. 
 
to roam and forage
                          a la carte
each of us bleating
 
One calm, sunny morning at the port of Amalfi, we rent a boat with captain and cruise la costeria amalfitana. Speeding over Mediterranean seas, the motor’s blades spew and spit up a hearty wake on either side of its sleek hull. Our bodies rise and fall in syncopation as we glide over the choppy surface. We gaze in wonder at the coastline’s uninterrupted cliffs and recall our very own mountainous Shawangunk cliffs surrounding our country home. In both locales, prehistoric rock formed millions of years before us, the result of tectonic shifts. Almost imperceptibly, we become part of the landscape.
 
audacious
     the alchemy of geography
a life at sea
 
Our last day. Never mind its fancy shops, our interest in Capri was mainly the brisk walk from the Marina Grande to its southeastern corner, escaping glitz for beach. And our lunch stop, Trattoria da Luigi. In full view of i Faraglioni, three spurs of rock shooting up out of the sea. Like a massive whale that stands erect just before crashing down. 
 
We descend our final stone pathway to Da Luigi, its own wonder awaiting. A beachside family enterprise going back decades. Seated outdoors, the beach and monolithic rocks just beyond reach, we will always remember Italiani promenading waist high in azure waters and Spaghetti alle Vongole with a glass of Vermentino. 
 
to linger 
in the company of seagulls
over time
 
**
​
Kirk Lawson lives Ulster County, New York, surrounded by the Shawangunk mountains. 
 He enjoys poetry as a creative outlet to enhance meaning in living. Published in Discretionary Love, Months to Years, Thorn and Bloom. Grateful to his husband Jim and dog Leo for all they teach him each day.

     

​ 
Pupa Dreaming
 
I put my ear to the monarch larva munching milkweed because it must be making noise the way it’s chomping—like a typewriter bangs out letters to make words, or like my grandfather would eat corn on the cob, butter dripping down his chin, flecks of yellow corn flying from his mouth and us grinning behind our hands. I get so close I can hear the little guy chewing. Is this its voice? The larva think we are so stupid with our imaginations and equations. Why would they need to talk? With each move, their sets of legs follow along. Look at them crawling upside down on the bottom of a leaf! Heads and tails nearly identical. They don’t know whether they’re coming or going. What bugs do have voices? What about crickets? Their song is a kind of voice but not from any mouth. Their legs the viola and bow singing love songs. And cicadas too, with their little horny tymbal membranes of desire. The monarch caterpillars work hard at being metaphors for poems and sermons. Growing faster than weeds and messing with our minds at transformation time. Do we believe it because it’s true or is it true because we believe it? They are really harping on their status as miracles. Now they’ve lost their skins and become little green pods hanging from the rafters like sleeping vampires. They dream of stained glass windows and the purple-gold taste of sugar, of sailing to the silence of Mexico for rekindling the aerial dance of their love. 
 
**
 
 
The Dream Act Explained
 
There is no somnolent village. The brain’s wires can turn against the somatic as well as the soul and torment the body of the afflicted. A lycanthrope is institutionalized when visions of demons cause violent acts. In my nightly visitations I feel sorrow and anger more fervently than when I am awake. The village in my vision is no fairy tale illustration. No church steeple. No quiet mattresses of homes or cypress trees spiralling toward the clouds. Souls I meet there are in airports needing care. I take on other strange shapes. My baby disappears when I drop her down a hole to a better life. There is no one that will help me locate her without revealing I do not belong. She was a “dreamer.” Her body fell through the air and shimmered and was gone. I had trusted she would be safe before I could follow. Women on the floors below wanted her for her black eyes. My body was too large to fit. Hair sprouted from my chin and I roared.
 
**
 
Gratitude List
 
At bedtime I make a list of ailments     body parts that hurt     at night I wake myself with a full body lunge away from the nightmare abductor coming     at me through that thin dissolving membrane     at dawn I wonder what color the sky is     at ten I thought double digits     at once I must combine all I’ve consumed and form it like clay     at my desk I put my head down and sob     at school my teacher would turn out the lights and make us put our heads down     at school I longed     at dinner     at church     at home     was I ever in charge at all     at times I was seven and scared     at other times I was 18 and looking over my shoulder     at bedtime I make a list of gratitudes     stuff the headphones in my ears against anyone’s noises     at my own noise     the gears in my head     at my friend’s house we listened to music and     at the pond we smoked     at lunch we gathered in the courtyard     at bedtime I make a list of ailments     at the top of my head     at the bottom of my feet     at no time am I ever     at no time am I ever     at once old and young and     at bedtime I make a list of gratitudes leaking in like music that won’t die     at the hooks that dig in and sing until I’m sick with it     at night I leak like music     at church     at the dance     at memory     at all at all at all
 
**
 
I Dream My Daughter and I Are on Vacation
 
I tell her I will buy all the thrift shop dresses she loves. The ribbon dresses, the chiffon, and the denim. I tell her she can walk at night freely in transparent plum colours. She can slide down the cleft of a landslide into the ocean if she wants. She can click her heels down any aisle or forest path. She can fill her lungs with smoke or clean mountain air. Her teeth can grind the hardest diamonds into speech. Her tongue can taste, ingest, or detest wine. Still she will be safe. She will know her ideas are the changing sky we worship.
 
**
 
On A Morning White as Cotton Batting
 
I’m coming out of dreams of a before-life, belly crawling. My arms drag me over the dirt, legs trailing. Belongings held in caches along the way. I’m showing my son the bed I shared with his father. (Was this our room?) And my pregnancy belly up against the brick walls. What lighting! And I can’t remember if this was where we ate. What I thought was coming next. I’m telling my son this is where we slept, but the light is on, and there are no windows. What does he expect of his next steps? Our cat’s dying is when he first learned that death rests in mulch in the shadow of the house with flies in its eyes. What about your great grandma dying? He can only remember sitting on her lap and being afraid of her wattle. She was kind and quiet. You used to pretend to be her, I tell him. Shuffled along with her walker wearing her slippers. He asks, Is that when you knew your boy was gay? Were you disappointed when you found out? Of course not, I say. I was terrified for your safety. I am on the ground with my face in doll guts. Watching my breath. My heart sounds too close, gunning against the what-ifs.
 
 
**
 
concerned I might have a doubt about it my swan arranges a seance at the wedding 
 
no weeding of geese //  somnambulist trains //  and nuances pertain to anything aware of ascots and veins protruding //  as if blood dries like paint and the puddles form pearls of lists //  as if the culprit is in the culvert with the bones of the child left wrapped in his blanket of lies //  the blue of the soft felt against the wisp of his wishbone cheek //  the satin edge deckled as paper in a lint of books //  the lilt of lit fuses //  also ranging as a motorbike //  rattle and fart blast of air and mortgage of sunshine //  only the masters can mediate //  for all along the wall was art and music //  much music of lies //  of laughter and mores and morass //  where all the bugs you could encounter //  what was this beetle with the glass wings //  what was this machine of dirt  // where all that can be named is metaphor and brittle laughter //  and enemies designing cheap concert tee shirts //  all along the fevered walls the tomato bugs swarm //  the ants and their armies //  their black bodies glinting like guns //  flint of lighter snicking from the wheel against the grain //  the grind and gird of concrete and steel beams //  the sun and how hot metal sears the skin that grazes it //  even the fork //  even the suit the spoon //  the shine of a steer //  of an iconoclast in sunglasses //  ideas of heaven and earth that leave even the brightest smile a smirk //  the landing of stairs twenty feet up //  the bodies found there bludgeoned //  their portraits above them hanging from nails
 
**
  
What Nobody Tells You About Sleep
 
It has common demons as far back as 2400 BC, incubi and succubi, witches, Liliths, Old Hags, and horned gods who sit on your chest to stop your breathing. Sleep paralysis – a witch who smirks at you while licking the mouth of another woman; it is a bat that lands on your petrified chest; it is the ghost of a boy who died by suicide. It has hypnagogic hallucinations as you are falling asleep – the plunge off a cliff which wakes you up with a jerk. Hypnopompic hallucinations in the transition to wakefulness – visions of black letters, of grainy footage, frottage. It has sleep misperception, aka paradoxical insomnia – you think you are awake all night, but really you were asleep. There are lucid dream vibrations – buzzing sounds; a feeling of hands curling into claws; an electric current running in the veins. If you dream of death you are undergoing a life transition. The part of your brain that deals with language shuts off when you sleep. Only poets can read words in their dreams.
 
**
 
Jessica Purdy is the author of STARLAND and Sleep in a Strange House (Nixes Mate, 2017 and 2018), The Adorable Knife (Grey Book Press, 2023), and You’re Never the Same (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023). Her poems and micro-fiction have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Spiritual Literature, Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Best Micro-Fiction. Her poetry appears in The Ekphrastic Review, About Place, On the Seawall, Radar, SoFloPoJo, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere. She lives in Exeter, NH.
 
 
 
 

​You Know What’s Next
 
The sink fills with half-rinsed plates. Any spoken word is rationed like oxygen in a diver’s tank. Silence hovers, fat with unsaid. When the kettle whistles, no one moves. When glass breaks, no one flinches. When the dog whines at the door—that’s the only honest sound in the house. The regulated air between has hardened into amber. No we, no I, no you, as the bed grows wider—just a suitcase under, ready like a parachute. The refrigerator moans secrets. No one will say it. The mirror develops static. Not yet. Every doorknob is an oracle.
 
**

Heartbeat of Steel
 
The girls knot lightly together, laughter slicing through air, skirts hiked high like flags of defiance. Smoke curls from their lips, grey ribbons unraveling toward the West Virginia evening sky. One girl, with dark feathered hair, eyes set hard like cobblestone, leans against the dim street light. Dried black smudges under her lashes contrast her pallid cheeks. She flicks her cig, the filter end rimmed with Bliss You Berry. Without a glance you see her walk past 7-Eleven, past the red convertible stacked with whistling, booming boys. Pink scrunchie on her wrist, she shifts her hips, savouring the snug fit of her favourite jeans, months in the making. The other girls pull at their tiny crop tops, sheer without imagination. She doesn’t need to look—her steps say more than her story, the rhythm of her boot heels ask no permission. Stronger than the steel they shape at the factories, harder than the radiant black pavement, she cradles dreams. You could follow but no one could dance to the music crying in her head. Here, girls live small, take what they can, stuck in summer sweat, fight for that back seat between two boys. But this girl—takes more than they ever will. She moves through the smoke and heat, shard-sharp, ignoring their stares and hooting, as they pull away. Always weighed down, she stands near where the road spits fire.
 
**
 
Stitched in Solitude
 
I reach around to peel layers of hot sewn patchwork morphing. Husk tailored to each acquaintance unique, seemingly unending, blistering bubbling fabric drapes over stuck skin. Kaleidoscope threads clamor. Collar and yoke ornate with buttons of bone weigh down to paralyze muscles stretched. Thin sheath varnished chokes connecting and expanding, pulls out lingering gasps from the lungs. Sigh capes ceaseless lament. Vast inner pockets brush steel wool to satin flesh. Scars and scabs designed to be hidden and quiet become shifty and daring blow away then return in night through inflexible cobalt seams. Cloaked, frayed hemmed edges surrender. Torment sirens my solitary robe to bolt and release stoking this hateful pattern. Ashamed to reveal smoky familiar membranes, encased years unfurl as it envelops, fitting into cavernous holes. Grief pushes me small. 
 
**
 
This was first published at Unleash Lit.
 
**
 
Here, Me Out
 
I wander among the corridors of belonging, the walls of which are both fortress and prison. Figures murmuring grey, brown and terracotta cluster behind locked doors. Echoes converse with me. Corpulent fog tumbles over lake water painting my day in the artistry of exclusion. There could be cold poetry in being unseen. Or beauty. Slivered spaces between the spoken and silent. Blow wildflower seeds. Respite in that small crack of forgotten wall winding to the damp shoreline. Milky morning tease shadows. Periwinkle blue whisper petals of longing. Dreaming vines rustle. Among the soft curved crackles of leafy memory - challenge the bristled voices buried beneath the din. It’s time to reclaim every last word as testament. 
 
**
 
The Sky is Only a Ceiling If You Touch It
 
I’ve stared long enough to see steam form letters, ghostly alphabets rising from birthdays of broth. Soup becomes a séance, summoning scents of forgotten kitchens. Echo of wooden spoons scraping grief, stuck on the bottom. Flames beneath the pot flicker like a violin string plucked in an empty room—trembling, unresolved, searching for a song that is not yet written. My hands are clocks, ticking backward into wet clay of childhood, where the moon was a spoon and the stars sugar I poured too fast—too eager to sweeten skies before night collapsed into hunger. Steam curling like a ribbon around a gift I never mean to open. Lid rattles. Quiet panic—a secret trying to escape its own heat.
 
**
 
Ascent to Perfection
 
flying blind there she is grazing treetops guessing her route stumbles upon a boy man with hands like David certain Michelangelo sparked electric as he carved and smoothed tracing each static finger up to his dimple then to his open lip spilling out whispers listen he loves into eyes iris shades marble streaks dilating pupils peaking outlines and carving bodies out of block as the shadow of divine is sought throw heads back into high renaissance in this time of perfection
 
**
 
She Calls Me Civetta
 
Her love is not loud, but beckons, as hot skies hang weighted in July. Across the Ohio border, roads tangle with gravel beneath tires, clatterpinging against wheel wells. After climbing steep switchbacks, she will hold my hand at twilight, walking back acres along the creek, narrating her land spirit. Crank up the car windows as dust streams from the station wagon’s belly. We will find textures of ancient marine life within Indiana limestone: Trilobites and Brachiopods, outlining each baffling skeleton with our fingers. Whiffs of sweet, sunbaked hay mix with billows of metallic dust. One more turn to go, past weathered signs—Hilltop Farm, AKC Registered Collies. The swollen hill captivates, barely wide enough. Gritty rocks tumble left, as the car interior dapples darker under canopies of unspoiled trees. We will sit on scratchy woolen plaid blankets, tenderly shy, absorbing her sentience. No relief, sticking to my seat in pastel seersucker shorts. Until the very last bend, back wheel of the car slips, heart thumps right in my throat, sunshine strobes at the clearing, statuesque corn on one side, red brick farmhouse ahead. At the crest of the hill, long armed iron gates and a last hand-painted board that says Honk, igniting a chorus of barking and high-pitched yelps. Streaks of gold and white, black and white, behind gates that drag dirt in an arc, bolted onto worn gray barns. We come to the altar and will linger until lightening bugs hover, streaming Milky Way beams on us. Rolling down windows as freshly cut grass jumps in my nose, reaching hands to wave hello. Counting all life as a gathering of gifts—her constant canon like moon crescents gold. These are all God’s creatures. Gossip with breeze, leave apples where they fall, at dawn, the deer come.
 
**
 
This poem first appeared in Unleash Lit.
 
**
 
ckSlack is an emerging poet currently living in Pittsburgh, PA who began writing through her journals as a young woman with a life-long love of words, nature and Thanksgiving gatherings with her family. She is influenced by Renaissance and Surrealism art and inspired by classical and alternative music. She has been published in The Ravens Perch and Unleash Press.