Poet’s Corner - Geri Rosenzweig
A new collection of poems, White Sandals,
is due out this summer from Sulphur River Literary Review Press.
Swan Among the Mallards - first published in The Cortland Review, issue 16, 2001
No sudden blow upon the still air,
nor is she helpless in the swollen
inlet where they court beneath
overhanging willows,
their necks braided like snakes.
Nothing unusual in the way
he mounts her, no great beating
of wings as she sinks under his weight;
she knows enough
to keep her head above water.
The tide turns, they drift
among the mallards, bowing
and swaying like a couple of scholars
debating the pure forms of love.
Chartres first published in The Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Vol.XII, NO, 2
O winter evening of the mind,
does it matter
if a fine rain begins to fall.
We've still got the hood I bought
from a young woman
near the cathedral, and snapshots
of the lamb weeping beneath the glow
of pink lights in the butcher's window,
its ribs frilled in white paper.
Dark plums tumble from the last straw
covered table to fold
its legs in the market place,
lanterns come on across narrow
streets as I hurry towards a door
opening onto cobble stones
glistening like the walls of a hive,
a crusty loaf under my arm, the weather
composing a psalm on our plastic hood.
Passing the Tiger
It's always midnight when the old man
leaves the card tables to find his way home,
a little drunk, under stars big as cantaloupes,
his wine flask empty, a thin cloak flapping
about his knees as he leans into the wind, wondering
if the fire in his stove has gone out;
In the old Chinese poems
there is a great purity in the song
he sings under his breath as he passes
the tiger on the mountain road.
About Geri Rosenzweig
Geri Rosenzweig was born and grew up in Ireland where she worked as an RN before coming to New York. Her poems have been published in such journals as The Annals of Internal Medicine, BBC Wildlife Magazine (Poet of the Year Award 2000), Poetry International, Christian Science Monitor, Voices Israel, (Rueben Rose Poetry Award).
Books:
Half The Story, March St. Press
God Is Not Talking, Pudding House Press
