Bourgeon

A Woman Turns Fifty with Cherry Blossoms

A cold spring, too cold, blossoms a fizz of pink
only a smattering against the gray sky.

How much of the old me is left in this body?
Cells reborn or replaced, DNA repairs slowing

as parts of me wear out. Scans of brain and liver
show neurons unravelling, tumors lurking large

inside me. My hair more silver, my eyes growing
more gray, like the rain – perhaps I am, like the spring,

growing less bright each year. Or perhaps beneath
my skin I am heating up, catching fire, growing

more destructive, like the seas that threaten 
and the forests turning to flame each summer,

the earthquakes that threaten our sedate surfaces. 


In Spring, Cassandra Reminds Us

That even though the hyacinths smell so sweet,
a shadow lingers under our footfalls,
that late snow covers a multitude of sins.

Passover, Easter - festivals so violent in origin - 
celebrated with jellybeans, eggs and herbs -
can’t obscure the blood on the hands of time

we like to forget. Cassandra dreams of cities 
in flames, children dying on soldier’s knives,
nightmares she lives over and over. 

This plague, this war, today’s crimes are no longer
a surprise to her. She walks beneath the weeping willow
as it turns green, notices the pink petals falling,

piling at her feet. April’s early strawberries
stain our fingers. The delight and ferocity
of fertility rites, the rabbit with her nest,

spring’s shoddy bright delights -  she bows her head,
offers a prayer to the gods she knows will not answer. 
In her basket, branches of bruised blossoms.


Dating Profile

First of all, you should know 
I have pink hair
I ate a lot of stars as a child
I cheer for the villainess
I lack tact and can be judgmental
I was raised on fallen angels and apocalypse
I know how to throw a knife/shoot a gun
I know how to make you feel sorry
I don’t want to see pictures of:
1. your gun 2. your dick 3. dead animals you killed
4. your car 5. your dog 6. your wife/ex-wife/ex-girlfriend
Don’t want to hear about “those crazy bitches”
or your religion or your taxes or why things are so hard for white men
I’m not really sure why I’m here
childhood of Appalachian trees and fossils and daffodils
I like the beach gray and stony like my eyes
my favorite drink is a Pomegranate martini
you seem to lack direction  
I never said I was soft as a cloud
Have you already pictured me
naked? or dead? I’m not selling
what you’re buying anyway. 
I’m not as nice as I look
If I had one word to describe myself
chaossparkstormblossomficklefaefair

Jeannine Hall Gailey is a poet with Multiple Sclerosis, who served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She’s the author of six books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, Field Guide to the End of the World, winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and the SFPA’s Elgin Award, and, upcoming in 2023, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions. Her work has appeared in journals like The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry. Her web site is www.webbish6.com. Twitter and Instagram: @webbish6.

Image: Cherry blossom in Japan under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license by ajari

Woman In A Field

I want to paint your sky blue skirt spotted 
with hundreds of white islands, ocean on land 
before a primrosed field, grass green, hair 
a flame, talisman beside my keyboard, gift 
received. I thank you now, and dream of 
a world beyond my own eyes, of essences, 
sky,water, woman, primroses, grass. I say 
the peace that came dropping slow drops 
for me as well as I gaze on poppies, butter-
cups next to primroses. I can catch them all 
in a net of wildflowers, and you how shall 
I name your abandon before field and sky wearing 
the ocean on your body? How shall I turn away? 
Will you walk with me reading these lines?


House Before the Endless Plain

My house is made of dishwasher and microwave-proof 
glasses and dishware, fine-cut serving bowls, goblets plated 
in gold, trays to serve sweetmeats, plaques I received 
for speeches to Rotary and Lions clubs, to the local American 
school. I have a blue flower- bordered poem about a bird 
just above me in full song as I look up thinking of Cote d'Ivoire 
and an angel in flight. I think of you now on the other side 
of these lines, how you are drinking tea, how you attend 
to perfumes and powders. I think of you on each of 
the continents, my collective love, universal and catholic 
taste. But I am still in the relay race, looking for a partner 
to whom I can pass the baton. Work has become a cul-de-sac, 
an alley at the end of the road, but beyond is the yet-to-be 
discovered field, fresh air, bird song falling.


Another Murder Most Foul

The kid, eighteen, white, drove for hours and hours,
a camera on his head, to mow black people down 
in the parking lot and  inside a Tops market 
at Buffalo, New York. And once again we wonder 
if the right to bear arms will be challenged, whether 
weapons might become a little more difficult to buy 
at gun stores, in sections for arms at the larger all 
purpose markets, at shows, on the internet. And 
we wonder why the cop persuaded the kid to turn 
himself in, to not kill himself. So justice can be 
served? So we can imagine his pretty boy face 
through trial and judgment and in dreams 
of survivors, the ones whose families were 
shredded one Saturday afternoon, food shopping?

Image: Baton Pass Flying at 120 mph under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License by Richard Schneider

Indran Amirthanayagam edits poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions (www.beltwayeditions.com). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly (www.beltwaypoetry.com). He has published 22 poetry books, including Ten Thousand Steps Against The Tyrant (Broadstone Books, 2022) and Blue Window, translated by Jennifer Rathbun (Dialogos Books, 2021)