TWO POEMS
by Amy Gerstler
Bon Courage
Why are the woods so alluring? A forest appears
to a young girl one morning as she combs
the dreams out of her hair. The trees rustle
and whisper, shimmer and hiss. The forest
opens and closes, a door loose on its hinges,
banging in a strong wind. Everything in the dim
kitchen: the basin, the jug, the skillet, the churn,
snickers scornfully. In this way a maiden
is driven toward the dangers of a forest,
but the forest is our subject, not this young girl.
She’s glad to lie down with trees towering all around.
A certain euphoria sets in. She feels molecular,
bedeviled, senses someone gently pulling her hair,
tingles with kisses she won’t receive for years.
Three felled trees, a sort of chorus, narrate
her thoughts, or rather channel theirs through her,
or rather subject her to their peculiar verbal
restlessness ... our deepening need for non-being intones
the largest and most decayed tree, mid-sentence.
I’m not one of you squeaks the shattered sapling,
blackened by lightning. Their words become metallic
spangles shivering the air. Will I forget the way home?
the third blurts. Why do I feel like I’m hiding in a giant’s nostril?
the oldest prone pine wants to know. Are we being freed
from matter? the sapling asks. Insects are well-intentioned,
offers the third tree, by way of consolation. Will it grow
impossible to think a thought through to its end? gasps the sapling,
adding in a panicky voice, I’m becoming spongy! The girl
feels her hands attach to some distant body. She rises
to leave, relieved these trees are not talking about her.
Source: Poetry (March 2013).
Why are the woods so alluring? A forest appears
to a young girl one morning as she combs
the dreams out of her hair. The trees rustle
and whisper, shimmer and hiss. The forest
opens and closes, a door loose on its hinges,
banging in a strong wind. Everything in the dim
kitchen: the basin, the jug, the skillet, the churn,
snickers scornfully. In this way a maiden
is driven toward the dangers of a forest,
but the forest is our subject, not this young girl.
She’s glad to lie down with trees towering all around.
A certain euphoria sets in. She feels molecular,
bedeviled, senses someone gently pulling her hair,
tingles with kisses she won’t receive for years.
Three felled trees, a sort of chorus, narrate
her thoughts, or rather channel theirs through her,
or rather subject her to their peculiar verbal
restlessness ... our deepening need for non-being intones
the largest and most decayed tree, mid-sentence.
I’m not one of you squeaks the shattered sapling,
blackened by lightning. Their words become metallic
spangles shivering the air. Will I forget the way home?
the third blurts. Why do I feel like I’m hiding in a giant’s nostril?
the oldest prone pine wants to know. Are we being freed
from matter? the sapling asks. Insects are well-intentioned,
offers the third tree, by way of consolation. Will it grow
impossible to think a thought through to its end? gasps the sapling,
adding in a panicky voice, I’m becoming spongy! The girl
feels her hands attach to some distant body. She rises
to leave, relieved these trees are not talking about her.
Source: Poetry (March 2013).
Hoffnung
He fancies his chances are good with her,
unaware that in the years since the war
she has come to prefer women whose cunts
she has come to prefer women whose cunts
taste like mustard. To pin one’s hopes on
a bark-colored moth, its wings crinkled
a bark-colored moth, its wings crinkled
like crepe paper, a moth affixed high
on the kitchen wall, frozen for days where
on the kitchen wall, frozen for days where
it will likely die in noble clinging mode
just under the cobwebby heating vent,
just under the cobwebby heating vent,
is to confirm your need for more friends
and a greater daily quota of sunlight.
and a greater daily quota of sunlight.
To raise C.’s hopes that T. can stop
drinking and then to liken those
drinking and then to liken those
hopes to fields of undulating grain,
alfalfa perhaps, is to wish C. hip deep
alfalfa perhaps, is to wish C. hip deep
in acres of unscythed denial. The blind
typist hopes she’ll be hired tonight without
typist hopes she’ll be hired tonight without
her disability becoming an issue. L. said he felt
hope’s rhizomes race throughout his body,
hope’s rhizomes race throughout his body,
radiating in all directions, like some incipient
disease he’d been fighting since childhood.
disease he’d been fighting since childhood.
Hope, he said, it’s as insidious as bitterness.
If mother earth only knew how much we
If mother earth only knew how much we
loved one another she would creak, shudder,
and split like a macheted melon, releasing
and split like a macheted melon, releasing
the fiery ball of molten hope at her core.
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