What's New With Me

 New poetry chapbook book "Dreams and Other Magic" published by Alien Buddha Press is available now on Amazon!

12/10/23 - I'll be a Featured Reader at Poetry the Art of Words in Plymouth, MA. The event is at 12:00noon in the Plymouth Center for the Arts.

Short story "In Yorktown, Her Name is Sharon" out now at Esoterica Magazine!

Short story "The Dry Years" can be found at Half and One! .... and stay tuned, because they've accepted two more stories for future publication!

Short story "The Man Who Lives In 6C" can be found at Esoterica Magazine!!

My poem "No Small Hole" has been accepted by Written Tales Magazine. It'll be on their website shortly, and is included in their latest "chapbook", available now: Written Tales Chapbook XI: Nostalgia

My poems "Dr. O'Little" and "Raymond Carver's Toaster" have been accepted for publication in the journal Coneflower Cafe, from Choeofpleirn Press (the publishers say, "Our name is pronounced chuf-plern and roughly means 'the chief place of rest,' but it is a word we coined by alternating the letters of our surnames."). Coneflower Cafe comes out in March 2024.

2/11/24 - I'll be a Featured Reader at an event sponsored by Slightly Off-Beat Poets, in Thompson CT. Stay tuned for details.

Also, I'm almost always at the Pour Me a Poem open mic event in Mansfield, second Thursday of every month (email me for location and details, or find Pour Me a Poem on Facebook); Poetry the Art of Words open mic in Plymouth, second Sunday of every month (except July and August); and Poetorium at Starlite, last Thursday of every month in Southbridge.

Click here to see my appearance on For The Love Of Words, from Easton Community Access Television, from 2/16/23.

Some photos from prior events:

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.

A Tiger in Her Hips

Let me tell you man she’s got a tiger in her hips,

She’s got fire in her fingertips,

And I can’t wait to kiss her lips again.

She’s devoured by her desire to devour me,

As I her, every time I see

The sparkle in her sea green eyes.

And when we are united in the burning fire

Of our love, consumed by our desire,

We feel no fear as we soar ever higher, never

Dreaming of landing, ever clinging tightly

To each other and knowing, rightly,

That we’ll find each other nightly, evermore.

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

Eternity must be jealous of the present

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.

Unmindfulness

 Unmindfulness
 
turn down the volume on Ego, turn it down to “1”
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)
 
an intentional day-dreaming journey toward
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
 
find without seeking, discover without searching
 
    unmindful
 
Bring me back a poem

Not 'Why', But 'How'

 For millennia we’ve been asking the wrong question.
“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?