I live in Portland, OR with my family, and write
poetry, essays and fiction. My work has appeared or
is forthcoming in The American Poetry Journal, The
Comstock Review, Verseweavers, VoiceCatcher,
and online at thepedestalmagazine.com,
mamazine.com,hipmama.com, and
hotmetalpress.com.
poetry, essays and fiction. My work has appeared or
is forthcoming in The American Poetry Journal, The
Comstock Review, Verseweavers, VoiceCatcher,
and online at thepedestalmagazine.com,
mamazine.com,hipmama.com, and
hotmetalpress.com.
Boiling Beets
for Cindy and Emily
You choose them for their solidity and shape,
their ability to stain the heart from under the produce light.
Their edible greens, too, the red-veined and cooled trails
the morning sun once stalked in the furrowed fields.
You carry them home with other necessities wrapped
in plastic and brown butcher paper, flowers
for yourself in an extravagant fuchsia funnel, reach
for them first out of all the other chores,
then charm them to settle together
like sleeping children into one bed,
sandy cheeks ruddy with dreams,
ignite the fumarole to flame and will
those roots to tremor and roil, your face
the moon rising above earth-steam
filling the kitchen, governing the boiling hour.
And when they finally give up their skins and slip
between your fingers, glassy and calm,
you follow their growth rings, a striated map,
with a whetted knife, releasing cross-sections to the jar
and pour vinegar like a salve to preserve their luster.
The rubied water swirls down the drain.
Wipe your hands over and over against your apron
but the beet stain will outlast the rage cooked
out of the pot, vented to the afternoon shafting
through the leaded window. The sun turns
towards a new field of seedlings.
The next crop surfaces, leaves sluicing light
to our buried, molten hearts.
In The Shade
The streets are not as sour
as the heat wants us to believe,
flags trembling above used car lots
and dogs tethered to a weave of frayed nerves.
Grown boys snap fireworks
on the court, their quick feet learning
a hard dance. The moon's cool shoulder
turns towards the wilting ice-cream song
rounding the corner, coming close.
In the shade, clipping carefully,
as if the bushes were his own,
a man nestles rose after rose
like little tropical birds,
getting the arrangement just right
in the green plastic cup spilling water.
Those borrowed blooms,
for his mother, maybe, or a sweetheart,
never knowing how deserving
the man, this street
or the worn rays of the day
had deemed them to be.
Weather
Hood up, he drags his feet
through the morning's puddles, away
from the dull fury of mother against father
and the duplex containing the dogs
and his small sister. The gray rain insulates.
He watches for the slick yellow bus,
its chain-call rounding the feral streets,
gathering up children
on the first day of school.
Nothing keeps him here except
the sign stopping him
at an averted angle,
continuously rinsed and red,
also taunting the sky.
He would rather be out
in the sloppy world, soaked by rain
unable to find a creek-bed.
With his sneaker-heel he carves channels
from one pothole to another,
and water gratefully follows.
Trimming the Ferns
One would never think to attempt this in the woods,
out there on slopes where fiddleheads curl out
of winter over the browned forms of their younger selves,
whole sword-tribes thriving, alone, maneuvering
the sun and shadows where mythic giants might kneel
beneath the wild, symmetrical enveloping,
the fronds' under-story not something to be tampered with.
But in the scalloped borders of a tidy city plot,
I believe I must trim away the dead
to give the old ferns a surviving chance,
steward these ancient arms that have laid
centuries of spores, arms that allow me entry,
my supplicant palms unfurling, theirs
quietly hiding my black plastic snippers, like tricksters,
as I ease up from crouching in the duff,
from praying, when the night-shade floods.
Vow
You can see the spot now
though the body is gone
where the wren dusted her belly,
coating tail feathers, tips of wings,
with soft soot under the old plum.
She pivoted and cupped herself,
nearly rolling over like a horse
glad for the grass,
a little joyful winging,
then darted with beak and brow-streak
to the safety of wild grape
coveting the crowded fence.
You will watch over the small bowl
her body tamped, all day,
as long as you can tell it apart
from other dry brown bowls,
the places other little brown birds
have carved out for themselves
with strong feather-work,
the ones you will never see.
When the Moon Floats Unnoticed
and the wind is directionless,
you wake at 3 a.m. to a spring snow
wedding cherry blossoms
like a thin lace veiling
the stunned and starved bees,
and watch out the window
as the only street lamp
casts its gold glance
on the trajectory of the storm,
the last moment before
flakes stall on car hoods,
like the chance-witness
to comet dust scattering
behind the clouds, the hope
of a dream behind the lid,
something to see
after all.
for Cindy and Emily
You choose them for their solidity and shape,
their ability to stain the heart from under the produce light.
Their edible greens, too, the red-veined and cooled trails
the morning sun once stalked in the furrowed fields.
You carry them home with other necessities wrapped
in plastic and brown butcher paper, flowers
for yourself in an extravagant fuchsia funnel, reach
for them first out of all the other chores,
then charm them to settle together
like sleeping children into one bed,
sandy cheeks ruddy with dreams,
ignite the fumarole to flame and will
those roots to tremor and roil, your face
the moon rising above earth-steam
filling the kitchen, governing the boiling hour.
And when they finally give up their skins and slip
between your fingers, glassy and calm,
you follow their growth rings, a striated map,
with a whetted knife, releasing cross-sections to the jar
and pour vinegar like a salve to preserve their luster.
The rubied water swirls down the drain.
Wipe your hands over and over against your apron
but the beet stain will outlast the rage cooked
out of the pot, vented to the afternoon shafting
through the leaded window. The sun turns
towards a new field of seedlings.
The next crop surfaces, leaves sluicing light
to our buried, molten hearts.
In The Shade
The streets are not as sour
as the heat wants us to believe,
flags trembling above used car lots
and dogs tethered to a weave of frayed nerves.
Grown boys snap fireworks
on the court, their quick feet learning
a hard dance. The moon's cool shoulder
turns towards the wilting ice-cream song
rounding the corner, coming close.
In the shade, clipping carefully,
as if the bushes were his own,
a man nestles rose after rose
like little tropical birds,
getting the arrangement just right
in the green plastic cup spilling water.
Those borrowed blooms,
for his mother, maybe, or a sweetheart,
never knowing how deserving
the man, this street
or the worn rays of the day
had deemed them to be.
Weather
Hood up, he drags his feet
through the morning's puddles, away
from the dull fury of mother against father
and the duplex containing the dogs
and his small sister. The gray rain insulates.
He watches for the slick yellow bus,
its chain-call rounding the feral streets,
gathering up children
on the first day of school.
Nothing keeps him here except
the sign stopping him
at an averted angle,
continuously rinsed and red,
also taunting the sky.
He would rather be out
in the sloppy world, soaked by rain
unable to find a creek-bed.
With his sneaker-heel he carves channels
from one pothole to another,
and water gratefully follows.
Trimming the Ferns
One would never think to attempt this in the woods,
out there on slopes where fiddleheads curl out
of winter over the browned forms of their younger selves,
whole sword-tribes thriving, alone, maneuvering
the sun and shadows where mythic giants might kneel
beneath the wild, symmetrical enveloping,
the fronds' under-story not something to be tampered with.
But in the scalloped borders of a tidy city plot,
I believe I must trim away the dead
to give the old ferns a surviving chance,
steward these ancient arms that have laid
centuries of spores, arms that allow me entry,
my supplicant palms unfurling, theirs
quietly hiding my black plastic snippers, like tricksters,
as I ease up from crouching in the duff,
from praying, when the night-shade floods.
Vow
You can see the spot now
though the body is gone
where the wren dusted her belly,
coating tail feathers, tips of wings,
with soft soot under the old plum.
She pivoted and cupped herself,
nearly rolling over like a horse
glad for the grass,
a little joyful winging,
then darted with beak and brow-streak
to the safety of wild grape
coveting the crowded fence.
You will watch over the small bowl
her body tamped, all day,
as long as you can tell it apart
from other dry brown bowls,
the places other little brown birds
have carved out for themselves
with strong feather-work,
the ones you will never see.
When the Moon Floats Unnoticed
and the wind is directionless,
you wake at 3 a.m. to a spring snow
wedding cherry blossoms
like a thin lace veiling
the stunned and starved bees,
and watch out the window
as the only street lamp
casts its gold glance
on the trajectory of the storm,
the last moment before
flakes stall on car hoods,
like the chance-witness
to comet dust scattering
behind the clouds, the hope
of a dream behind the lid,
something to see
after all.
Kristin Berger
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