Barbara Krasner

Murmuration, a Triptych
 
I.
 
Starlings waltz above the trees in the county park. Turkey vultures tango on an abandoned chimney cap. Cardinals cha-cha on a red maple branch. A year ago, I could not open my eyes. A year ago, I could not leave my house. A year ago, I could not lift my legs. Now my maskless breath reaches out in open air, flutters feathers in a roar all my own.
 
II. 
 
She writhes in and out of consciousness. We’ve just been told her kidneys and liver are shutting down. More antibiotics. Stat. She’s in the ICU now, where they brought her when she arrived by ambulance, her blood pressure 84/42. But she will need to go into the OR later, to have a stent put in place to drain her bile duct where an infection has built up. She doesn’t know. She cries out for our dead mother. I want to take her hand the way I did when she caught her leg in a bicycle wheel. I was in high school and she was just entering kindergarten. I held her head in my lap across the bathroom counter as the doctor stitched up her knee. I want to take her hand, but I’m not wearing gloves and she’s immunocompromised by another disease she’s grappling with. Her son, her only child, came to New Brunswick from Long Island. I told him on the phone he’d better, because we don’t know if she’s going to make it. I’ve only been in the hospital to give birth. She, my baby sister, has had meningitis, all kinds of orthopedic surgeries, cancer surgery, and now this. She’ll pull through, because she always does. Because she refuses to accept the bad stuff. She mobilizes in a crisis like when our mother’s house was burgled. She came right away and kept us all sane. Like when our middle sister’s husband dropped dead during dinner at Applebee’s and she dropped everything, bought a cheesecake, and came to the hospital. Stayed with our sister for days. Wrote and delivered the eulogy the way she did for both our parents. And now here she is, under the white sheets, mumbling in Yiddish to speak to our dead mother. I want to hold her hand, but I don’t have her strength.
 
III. 
 
Waiting for Donna after I sent my son home, because he was retching from his worry about my cancer and the surgery, because I couldn’t hold him in my arms the way I did when he was little and kiss his burning keppy and made him tea with six packets of sugar, because the doctors wouldn’t tell him about my condition although he was chronologically old enough to hear, because he couldn’t handle his mommy being sick, and so I waited for Donna to come and get me, the way I waited for her a couple of years before when EMTs rushed me from my cubicle to Overlook because I couldn’t catch my breath and they thought it was a heart attack, but I knew it wasn’t, it was a gastro thing I didn’t learn about for several more years, my gall bladder not able to handle the fat in the gravy that accompanied my lunch, and I waited for Donna, who showed up at the hospital with a turkey wing in case I was hungry and she wrapped it in a surgical glove, and I had to laugh, because Donna could always make me laugh, and when Donna brought me home after cancer surgery, and my family handed me the bill for the kosher deli they brought in at my request, I wasn’t laughing anymore. 
 
**
 
Cross-Stitching
 
Fingers threading a needle, needle puncturing fabric, embellishing a canvas or stitching a seam. It’s all about self-expression through artistry of the hands with a needle. Sewing, crocheting, knitting, embroidery. And passing down the artifacts: a cross-stitched tablecloth, a knitted afghan, handmade Barbie clothes with miniature fur collars. When I began sewing in eighth grade, I did not know I came from seamstress grandmothers, a tailor great-grandfather. My ancestors have fused themselves into my skin-seams.
 
**
 
Luxury on the Half Shell
 
after Dream of Luxury, by Dorothea Tanning (USA) 1944
 
Crack open the natural oyster of your dreams. There inside the shimmering closet are rows of coveted handbags. Rare pearls to drape over your shoulder, hold in your hand. Caress each one, close your eyes as you finger the leather of Hermes, Chanel, Gucci, Leiber, Coblentz & Koret. You may be barren in the desert of materialism, but you can dream of ovaries of ownership. These gems rise from the shell like a Venus chorus. And there, in the sand, an unopened oyster. You fence it for your footwear fantasies.
 
**
 
I Will Make a Way in the Wilderness
 
after Survivor, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1938
 
I live in immuno-isolation, out here alone to wander and wonder. I wrap myself in plastic bubbles, wear a protective collar. No one can see my plumes. I stomp the ground until my feet grow numb. My discoveries go unshared. My illness and treatment have framed me tiny.  My frame is golden with embellishments in every corner. I glow survival.
 
**

The New Yoga Pose
 
after Woman with Egg, by Leonora Carrington (UK/Mexico) 1960
 
Ascend to the heavens, where you can kneel, rest, give gratitude for climbing the iron rails. The egg remains unbroken, the egg of rebirth, the egg of nirvana perfection. Joining you is the resting place of those who came before you, those who breathed life into the heavens, into the pantheon of gods who paved your way, gave you the dove-led path along which the egg glided. The archway is everything, no in, no out, just through, artifacts resting on the shelves like canned preserves, keeping myths alive for posterity. You are the bird who has found its rightful nest, black and white among the blue and white, your head-egg tethered to the heavens, your body in servitude. 
 
**
 
The Genus of Georgia
 
after Inside Red Canna, by Georgia O’Keeffe (US) 1919
 
Yayoi Kusama hides within the deep, dark polka dot of Georgia’s fierce protection, cradled by the curves that layer her fortress. Frida Kahlo grasps the edges and slides along Georgia’s waves. She cannot make it to the other side without an extra push. Georgia brushes her upward, lifts her into accomplishment. Inside Georgia’s red canna lily lays the stamen of friendship, the petals of patronage in the genus of generosity.
 
**
 
The Tuskegee Man
 
Like me, he walks through Colonial Park every day. I imagine his story. This tall gentleman is a World War II veteran. His posture tells me he was and is a disciplined military man. He wills himself into the daily routine of this walk, noting how important it is to keep up one’s strength, endurance, and health. He was a Tuskegee man, not a native to New Jersey. Flew with the best of them, because they were the best. That’s why he strides with a puffed chest. I watch him every day, impressed with his commitment. But one day, he sits on a wooden bench, just staring at the mockingbirds flying between the oak and elm trees. His coat is open. He still wears his CWA cap, which I know to be the Communications Workers of America, a union of the telecommunications industry, once so prevalent in New Jersey. He has done his time. He deserves his rest. As I pass him, I tip my own cap and say “Hello.” He does the same. 
 
**

V for Victory
 
They crowd themselves into the crux of the V for victory. It will take all of them working together—the veterans, the flyers, the navy, the marines, the infantry, the scientists, reporters, and filmmakers—to fight against the sheets of prejudice and hatred. Liberty is on their side as are FDR’s Four Freedoms—freedom of speech and expression, freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of worship. They come from all nationalities in solidarity, hammering their stake into victory.
 
**
 
Twisted Jazz
 
We, the Mad Hatter Musicians, find our groove in Central Park, our tenor and bass sax and bass dangling. We’re not into violins. We bend our bodies to the improv notes, limbering up those limbs we’ll entangle barefooted on the dotted Twister canvas on the knoll. A crowd gathers to watch us wrangle, hear us syncopate. Some sit, some kneel. Another pushes a dollar bill into the bell of my sax, mangling the sound. We play a bit, lay down our instruments and spin the wheel to play. Our legs take odd angles, our hands tangle. We laugh until we pick up our instruments and let the notes jangle all through the night.
 
**
 
Barbara Krasner is addicted to the prose poetry form. She is the author of seven poetry collections, and her poetry has been featured in more than seventy literary journals, earning her multiple Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction nominations. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com