Saturday, December 2, 2023
One Dream Is Not Enough
Our first meeting was like a dream,
Saturday, October 7, 2023
Review: Story & Bone, by Deborah Leipziger, Lily Poetry Review Books
Story & Bone, by Deborah Leipziger, from Lily Poetry Review Books
In her newest collection
of poems (Story & Bone, Lily Poetry Review Books, 2022), Deborah Leipziger
explores all the ways in which she intersects with her world, and thus helps us
all understand the ways in which we intersect with our own. She reveals herself
as daughter, mother, lover, friend; as baker, gardener, poet; as Brazilian,
American, Jew; but most of all as human.
Skillfully reusing phrases and images from one poem to the next, so that one page seems to echo the ones before, Leipziger reminds us of the rhythms and patterns in every life. The most notable example of this is when she speaks of her family’s story of ancestors concealing valuables as they escaped from tyranny: in one poem, “gems into the hems”; in another “gems sewn in hems”; in a third: “gems faceted by stone hidden in garments”. She then calls the very story into question: “Or is it legend / I sing the fiction and non-fiction”.
Or again with multiple
references to her own dangerous birth: “I celebrate my survival / from the umbilical
cord / wrapped around my neck”; and then, “the umbilical cord coiled around my
neck”. She then multiplies the echo through the umbilical connection between
herself and her twin daughters…and further by drawing the comparison between
her own blue complexion at birth and the color of the walls in the room where
she gives birth. Echoes upon echoes.
There
is an almost breathtaking sense of intimacy in this work, a fearless
willingness to share herself with the reader, body and soul, as in:
“I celebrate my nimbus of curls
nipples neck navel”
“I open myself and claim my
openness
I transform and sing
my Evolution”
“I enter with offerings –
Pomegranates and honey dates,
All that I will be is here.
Entering.”
There is an
earth-mother-like quality in the way she shows us a day of making lemonade with
her daughters (Lemonade), or compares the act of picking apples in an orchard
to that of motherhood itself (Apple Orchard), or when she provides the most
spiritual and open-hearted recipe I’ve ever seen anywhere (How to Make a
Challah).
Every page seems to glimmer with its own light, but for me the most sublimely luminescent moment comes in How to Help a Friend Mourn, which opens “For this you will need lemons” and then explains:
“Maybe you won’t have time to grow a lemon
tree
but you have planned for this moment,
this is why you’ve grown a lemon tree.”
As in her earlier work,
there are many floral images here, and when she puts the phrase “A half truth /
to say I painted flowers” into Georgia O’Keefe’s mouth it’s clear she’s
speaking of her own poetry as well. Sometimes a calyx or a spadix are more than
the parts of a flower.
All artists strive to
make their audience feel something. Leipziger succeeds triumphantly. You will
feel her warmth and her wisdom; her strength and her vulnerability; her love of
life and her deep understanding of both its pain and its beauty. This is a
truly lovely book.
Saturday, September 23, 2023
A Tiger in Her Hips
Sunday, September 17, 2023
Another Poem About the Moon
Another poem about the moon
Another song about what you mean to me
I have so much I need to say
About the moon and you and me
You and the moon and me
Side by side by side
Just the way it pulls the sea
Creating the rising and falling tide
It pulls on you and it pulls on me
Until we’re side by side by side
Another verse about the stars
The ones that hang in the midnight sky
And the ones I see shining
There in your eyes
You and the stars are my guiding lights
Hanging in the sky or hanging from your ears
Keep me on my path, day and night
I see you both always, far or near
Shining with a pure silver light
And I feel no fear
Just another song of you
Or another part of the same sweet song
I’ve sung since our love was new
And still my heart beats strong
And still my heart stays true
And still I sing the same sweet song
Of me and the moon and you
Sunday, May 21, 2023
Eternity must be jealous of the present
its immediacy, its relevance.
Yes, eternity must be jealous
when a lover smiles and sighs,
when she removes the clip
which had held back her hair,
freeing it and allowing me
to slip my hand between the strands
as if it were a bolt of priceless silk
which she offers to me
as a queen might offer
alms to a beggar.
My fingers luxuriate gratefully.
This gratitude and luxury
exist only in the present,
and so, eternity is jealous.
Eternity is full of
inconsequentialities
and coincidences.
Full of happenstances
and miscellaneous occurrences.
But only the present contains life.
Only the present contains love.
Only the present contains potentiality and value.
Only the present contains her sweet kiss.
And so, eternity is jealous.
Sunday, May 14, 2023
Unmindfulness
what remains will rise, float, free of time,
free of gravity, free of greed and desire
floating on whatever current it encounters
undirected
untethered
unmindful
bumping against whatever obstacles there may be
unhindered
uncontrolled
unmindful
a conscious dream-state
an exploration of the unknown, unknowable,
uncountable selves which you contain
(for, as Whitman, you contain multitudes)
that which is hidden
that which you will never find
that which feeds your ego-driven, day-to-day
existence as decaying compost feeds your garden
Sunday, May 7, 2023
Not 'Why', But 'How'
“Why are we here?” is as interesting and relevant
as “what’s your star sign?”.
There is no “why”, there is only IS.
We were not sent here on a mission,
or with a purpose or a function.
There is no celestial Headmaster
handing down life lessons to be studied.
There is no final exam to be passed or failed.
There is no spiritual scorecard to be reviewed when we die.
And there is no eternal reward or punishment awaiting.
We simply live,
in this world,
alongside all the other
people and animals and plants.
The question is not “why?”, but “how?”.
How best to live a life,
how best to carry on,
How best to simply BE in the world?
Sunday, April 30, 2023
The Gospel According to Aloysius Jones
I should know, I saw, I was there
Jesus never walked on water
And he didn’t have straight brown hair
Just another bag of bones
But I was there, I saw it all
I saw the rise, I saw the fall
Someone to listen, someone to hold
Someone to light a fire when
The nights are long and cold
Some say much more than that
Still, they killed him in the end
Don’t we treat all heroes like that
Just another bag of bones
But I was there, I saw it all
I saw the rise, I saw the fall
Or did his carcass rot to ash and dust
There’s only one rule in this world
If you live, then die you must
Just another bag of bones
But I was there, I saw it all
I saw the rise, I saw the fall
Sunday, March 19, 2023
Also The Darkness
You told me today
that your favorite kind of clouds
are the ones that are big and fluffy
and mostly white
but with a darker grey around the edge.
I think I know why.
For I am drawn to your light,
to your eyes aglow,
and your luminous smile,
to the shower of sparks every time you laugh,
the radiance of your deep brown hair,
and the bonfire in my soul when you touch me.
But also, I am drawn to the darkness
which lurks beneath the surface,
and which you try to hide behind the ocean of your eyes,
but which I see as clearly as if
it was written in black headlines on a white page.
As in nature, so in each heart,
there can be no light without darkness.
And so, I am the moth drawn to the flame
of the joy you can’t help but radiate,
just as I am the comforting arms
compelled to embrace the pain you hide
from everyone but me.
Sunday, March 5, 2023
May We Dance
As graceless as mannequins in formal attire,
Not knowing for whom we dress,
We rise formless as smoke to
impossible heights,
Entangled in each other’s mess.
One dances a rhumba, another a waltz,
Solo, or with partner in hand.
Some spin ‘cross the floor in shoes full of holes,
On scattered handfuls of sand.
I dance on this page since my feet don’t know how.
But we all dance to the tune of an unseen band.
May we dance until the final note
May we dance until the end
May we dance until the lights go out
May I dance with you, my friend
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Sunday, February 5, 2023
Nothing and everything all at once
Nothing and everything all at once
The speck that is the universe
And the multitude that is me
Both ends of the telescope
Equally essential…
…and insignificant
Sunday, January 29, 2023
Payday Loan
You don’t need me to tell you
It’s a hard, hard world
And mow their lawn and trim their hedge
They want someone to wash the dishes
At their favorite restaurant
But they don’t want no foreigners
Living in their town, drinking from their reservoir,
Driving on their roads
Always has been, always will
You don’t need me to tell you
It’s a hard, hard world
When he ain’t got no regular job
Says his collateral is your eternal soul
But he ain’t got no receipt on that
So, he better just keep shuffling along
To the next little town that don’t give a damn
Always has been, always will
You don’t need me to tell you
It’s a hard, hard world
Sunday, January 22, 2023
A Space In My Dreams
I listen to him for a while
I let my mind wander free until I hear him sing your name
you know that makes me smile
I made some room for you here in my dreams
You made a space for me in yours
I hope that where you are you can hear my song
I hope that when we meet again, you’ll have that black dress on
For we are both children of the magic moon
And I need to see you shine again soon
I made some room for you here in my dreams
You made a space for me in yours
If I could paint, I could paint the whole world, I know,
using only the colors of your eyes
If I could compose a symphony, it would be composed of only
your laughter and your sighs
your swaying hips supply the rhythm
our heartbeats keep the time
I made some room for you here in my dreams
You made a space for me in yours
I hope that where you are there’s music and the sun is shining
I hope that when you close your eyes you find me there, grinning
For we are both children of the magic moon
And I need you to see you shine again soon
I made some room for you here in my dreams
You made a space for me in yours
Saturday, January 14, 2023
I've Kept Everything
Every whisper and sigh
Every tear that you’ve cried
Every secret and promise
And every sweet kiss
They’re all here safe and sound
In this box that I keep hidden from the others
A poem a day for a thousand days
Every one about your smile
I’d still not be nearly through
They’d not take up the slightest corner
Dwarfed in comparison
To all your sweet gifts
Monday, January 2, 2023
Seldom Spoken Of
Are hemorrhoids and hernias. But I shall speak of these,
For I have had experience with each of them, you see.
Hernias, I’ve had a pair,
Both inguinal, and since repaired.
They’re in the front; hemorrhoid, in rear.
Other maladies, as well,
have assailed me through the years:
Pimples, rashes, broken bones,
waxy build-up in the ears,
A staph infection in my face
Which swelled up like a clown’s balloon,
And ingrown toenails, such disgrace,
but I trimmed them back, and soon.
Remain most prominent in memory.
Perhaps because of the delicacy of the neighborhoods
In which they occur.