Poem of the Week selected by Jerry T. Johnson:
Karen Neuberg’s "Desperation Garden" captures the underlying tension that all of us try to suppress as we keep our social distance from normal everyday living. Verse by verse, the poem illustrates the build up of the tension gnawing at us and the flow reveals that feeling elegantly.
Poem of the Week
Karen Neuberg
Desperation Garden
The scenery of day begins serene
or I am still mostly asleep.
The coffee seeps into my brain
and enlivens thought—but, I think
not yet! The scream that wants
to rise in me is mostly stilled.
I open blinds, let light pour in.
Nothing seems different or abnormal
from the norm. Not yet! But waiting,
just a breath away, barely a breath
and it will come to me. I do not want
to say it. Not yet! Think today
and how I’ll place a carrot end
in water beside some celery and lettuce.
My desperation garden on the windowsill,
this spring, how is it different
than others I have known? Clock
ticks, as if impatient for the word
to come to me. Not yet!—and yet
it comes, bold and large and loud:
PANDEMIC!—erasing all my ease.
***
Karen Neuberg’s latest book is Pursuit, (Kelsay Press, 2019). She is associate editor of the online poetry journal, First Literary Review-East. Her poems and collages can be found numerous online and print journals and anthologies including 805, Really System, New Verse News, Unbroken, and Verse Daily, among others.
Honorable Mention
Lindsay Adkins
The Waiting
for my unborn daughter
The morning breathes and stretches,
shows us again that it
does not wait for us:
trees push into their buds,
birds manage to
make their lungs work.
I wait for everything
to become something else
just so I can write it down.
Your father, a shadow in the half light
as he puts on gloves to
wait in line at the grocery store.
Because we have joined you
in your unborn pause.
You, unaware as the birds,
taking your time to push
into your unformed lungs
and breathe.
You, the un- everything.
We listen to our bones now, too,
hold our hands up to the
amniotic light at the window.
Breathe into our stomachs—
can we do it? Or does the virus
sniff around in our blood, ready?
I can shape this world
for you. Not lie,
but whisper that
We were unafraid.
We were unwavering.
We were un- everything.
All we wanted
was to be more like you,
muffling the sounds beyond
the walls, wading in
the dust, hoping for warm
arms when the door opens.
***
Lindsay Adkins is a recipient of the 2018 Amy Award from Poets & Writers. Her work has appeared in Narrative and Electric Lit, among others.
Honorable Mention
Corinne Shearer
Common Tongue
The pepper of late basil speaks,
in a hoarse whisper,
the language of time lost,
common tongue to the dry swell-song
of the cicadas who hang their hymns
with great effort in August.
I hold myself silent as first frost, a habit
that has crept through the vine,
from your house to mine, intuitive
as a mother tongue. Like thick, thronged mint,
I must be beat into expression.
All this falling begs definition.
To hear the sound of a body down
careening, it is only natural to look
upwards, not at the awkward bird-
crumpled feathers and spilled jewels- which disturb
the dirt where I mark time in circles, dragging a stick
behind me so that I remember where Spring should go.
***
Corinne Shearer is a dancer, and dance-maker. She shares her work locally, in New York City, where she is also a teaching artist. Corinne has been an Artist-in-Residence at The Triple Nine Festival, and is a recent Dance/NYC grant recipient.
Want to submit to our Poem of the Week or Flash Fiction of the Month?
We’d love to read your work!