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Two poems by Risa Denenberg

Risa Denenberg

fossil view / credit: de
fossil view / credit: de

On Becoming a Geode

I left high school pregnant,
tiny pebble in the chaotic boot of the sixties.

Banished for smallminded things—
skipping class, protesting war, French kissing
in the girls’ room.

It was all so very polite and meaningless.
Stuff your leather jacket, your sandals, your poetry books.
We’re not interested. In you.

I left home the day my father slapped my face,
called me a slut. I don’t always make it
out the door before a fist or two.

Our bodies were formed

to be discarded.
to sleep in vacant lots.
to hide inside a crater.
to practice restraint.
to wait hundreds of millions of years.

to learn

how our interiors are filled with others’ needs.

 

(this photo of) My Grandmother

whom I forever never met      (my lips that never brushed her cheek)   who says
in a language I don’t speak, I didn’t know you could do that.   I have only this photo.
I go right to the eyes    they are green      (although the photo is black and white)
I go from eyes             to the slender philtrum         and back to the eyes.
Silence is her blessing.      She is a costume, a gesture of herself.    She is me.
I swap her headdress            for my backwards baseball cap      (black with Seattle
written in pink script)                her arthritic fingers                     so young,
so young                                   dead at 54                   Something is missing.
Yes, something is always missing.                  Because time and space are
the silence                  of questions                like a storm    of misunderstandings.
Such otherness, even in kin.                   Did you know that mother bears
will sometimes kill their young?               That cichlids hold their eggs
in their mouths                  while the male sprays them with sperm?
But she is kin:                    my seed/my eggs/my mouth/my eyes/my philtrum.
And what I can’t quite see              in the periphery:      the pillows of repose
the lute strings                               the pages
which are her undergarments         but
was my broken tooth                     and
is my irascible brother                    also
was my silent father                       who
is still his mother’s eyes                  my father’s mother’s eyes.
My eyes.                   The otherness of others is a type of silence.
Have you ever tried to quilt the sun?                        When you are done
turn the book                        (the one you are holding in your left hand)
to page 68 where                  you will find an announcement
of my death.                 You are not allowed to cry.

Risa Denenberg - grandmother

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Risa Denenberg

Risa Denenberg lives in Sequim, Washington, where she works as a nurse practitioner. She is a co-founder and editor at Headmistress Press and publishes reviews of poetry at The Rumpus, Crab Creek Review, Broadsided Press, and other venues. Risa curates The Poetry Café, an online meeting place where poetry chapbooks are celebrated and reviewed. She has published three chapbooks and three full-length collections of poetry, most recently, slight faith (MoonPath Press, 2018). For more information: thepoetrycafe.online and risadenenberg.com.

Author: Risa Denenberg Tags: poetry Category: Poetry December 13, 2019

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Comments

  1. Stewart Denenberg says

    December 15, 2019 at 4:13 pm

    She was also my great grandmother.
    My dad, your father’s brother, also had a violent temper which he directed at everyone in the family.
    What kind of person was their father?

    Reply
    • Stewart Denenberg says

      December 15, 2019 at 4:16 pm

      Sorry, I thought my comments went directly to Risa Denenberg so they probably make a whole lot sense to anyone else.

      Stewart Denenberg

      Reply

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

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