noteworthy
In each issue, the editors choose a writer they would like to bring
to the readers' attention.In this issue, Ann Neuser Lederer is highlighted.
Ann Neuser Lederer, a nurse by trade and dedication, looks with eyes ready to make a diagnosis: "Already the future arrives. / The antidote for liquid bandage: more of the same." In powerful, jarring image after image, Lederer's poems stay with us, whispering in our ear when we are trying to sleep: "The wind kicks up: a gasp. // That photo -- you know the one -- that little red T shirt. Seemingly napping. // Rips out tongues." A healing presence permeates these poems making us willing to trust the diagnosis: "You can slowly bathe the body. // You can hold its hands. // You can finally rest."
Vestiges' Visits
Parade of Antidotes
Contradictory Messengers
Sneakers & Shorts
A Run with the Riff-Raff
Revelry
Heron, Apparently Puzzled
Fold Flat to Fit
Vicissitudes of Living
Last Mowing
Some thump their whole selves against
the inside walls in frenzy.
Their tiny leather lips turn back.
Their sharp needle teeth are ready to bite.
From behind a closed door,
the poodles protest banishment.
Their muffled yelps are curled and sprung.
Brothers and sisters, thick in their wool.
Swarms of translucent strangers mill
into the tiny room, just before midnight.
Empty of hand, but hands in motion, shuffling, mumbling,
vaguely familiar, like crowds at parades in your own hometown.
Lit from within, like tissue paper lanterns, vestiges of other eras
slide to breezy spaces through the slightly opened window.
Slowly, the skin prepares for separation.
The merest tap assaults.
It could be a wake-up.
Already the future arrives.
The antidote for liquid bandage: more of the same.
Hair of the dog. Acetone reek of ripe banana.
Ashes in a camper's residue adhere.
Twig shapes, still slightly warm,
disperse in a puff.
The antidote for love is grudge.
A small boy chants train sounds
nobody taught him.
And hand signals anyone can figure out.
A train in the night is an idol adored.
A row of squirrel-sized children, void of all color but white,
lines the front of a simple brick house, street after street of the same
-- except -- a twitch will disconcert.
These children, pale, in pairs, faces and torsos only, hug.
Some purse their lips, aiming to kiss.
The lovable statues all lined up where bushes usually appear.
Alert for tweaks, anything strange distinguishes.
Cheerfully painted gnomes, geese with kerchiefs,
red-capped grooms, a rusted cauldron filled with flowers.
Those wan children, never seen before.
But now, our bird friends scatter, screeching, some fleeing upward.
Furious smoke and stench erupts behind that very same house.
Pounding heart and visions of assassins: boys in the alley
way back when, lighting up cherry bombs. Fingers blown off.
A stooped man flings his arm. A bang of shots.
The hovering birds go quiet.
Mysterious chalky mushrooms crop up everywhere,
kissy-faced kids with torsos only.
The tree down the street where the crab apple split
by lightning, now chopped down, except for the stump.
The fist-size mushrooms multiply, probably poison, best to assume.
Dark-visored, moon-suited, filmed from afar, the rescued Ebola man,
transported home, steps down from the ambulance,
not on a gurney after all, is guided away to strict isolation.
Fake mountain stream aligns with nearby highway fumes.
So hot the blizzards of memory nearly melt.
Bamboo flourishes improbably within its cage, attempts escape.
Upstream, a man with a headdress and backpack brushes his teeth.
A flock of apathetic plaster sheep lined up on a gate peek down.
Always a little child in shorts wades and shrieks in the burbling water.
Tiny sneakers wait by the ledge.
The wind kicks up: a gasp.
That photo -- you know the one -- that little red T shirt.
Seemingly napping.
Rips out tongues.
Might move mountains.
Escaped through a gap
in the tipsy fence,
a stray dog
sniffs its snout upwards
from the last porch step,
then scoots back away
when shouted at to do so.
The temperature, with thunder,
will drop in one day by twenty degrees.
It has not happened yet.
The children go suddenly quiet, listening for undertones.
Two male voices at a distance argue,
indistinguishable over the phone lines.
One had been trying to bathe the other;
the other tried to run away.
A lone mourning dove
spaces its coos so sparingly
as to seemingly disappear
in the interims.
A way the invisible recognize each other.
The eave, curved and loosened
from birds bringing twigs for a nest,
pops a screw.
Screeches, wails: the large demanding gulls -- One
pulls a box across the parking lot, cardboard tight in its beak.
At the black mud shore, crisp gulls mewl.
Among them, small, dovish birds scatter.
Slim dark beaks -- peep peep -- point seaward.
Force a jolly tone: wedding revelers gather: photo-ops
on the beach -- brisk wind, the sleeveless beauties pose.
It is not so difficult to pretend -- singing, clapping --
suddenly happiness erupts.
Gulls again, like wound-up urbans quarreling in a corner
of the parking lot. Where do they roost -- their nests -- where?
A Great Blue Heron pup on feet, not wing,
slowly swivels its tentative hieroglyphic head.
Its steps, wire legs, thin feet,
so close to the edge,
as it peers, as though for fish,
into the grass-green fake lagoon,
the chemical stew whose sterile brew lures,
but does not yield.
A cheery fountain spouts
a spray towards the highway,
the sinister stylish flowers,
the empty corporate structures,
this silent Sunday afternoon.
I stop my walk. I track the limp
to perceive its hesitation -- youth,
or desperation, aged confusion,
or simply the snapshot I happened to view.
Captive houseplants rotate
towards the window
leaves upturned, unnoticed
then noticed;
a twist to the chill clay container
begins the process again.
From under the surface, gleaming,
a flickering ribbon of light beckons,
induces a gradual gravitation.
All the things we do, the sweeping, raking,
plucking; saving withered flowers
for their seeds: that sweet scent of damp,
rescued marigolds after the first freeze,
their spry potentials, multitudes of patience,
secure in their in papery casings.
Under a mossy, darkened surface,
phantom Koi slide.
A red, a gold, then gone.
If left to inclinations, a swimmer
scoots beneath ropes
towards warmth, imagined.
The bubbles speak graffiti,
cloud formations,
languages of reassurance.
Not to be misconstrued as stranger,
maps of unfamiliar places
folded flat to fit inside the palm.
Held off at the shower room
for unexplained repairs.
Go to the Girls' instead.
Its cozy stalls just right
for consolation.
Beeps and alarms at the library Story Hour.
Evacuate! Faces deliberately bland.
Silence maintained, without being told.
Strollers trot towards elevators.
Toddler in tow, the grandparents opt
for stairs instead. Think crushed,
think Cocoanut Grove, think history.
But with death, you can take your time,
for death is not an emergency.
You can wait to make the call.
You can sit and gaze.
You can slowly bathe the body.
You can hold its hands.
You can finally rest.
The day has come for the last mowing,
A tease of warmth encourages.
Long shadows shift; beckon or warn.
The spiders wander, awry, in the muted afternoon.
In fits and starts, a thick one, furred, advances
from cracks in ravaged wood, eventually
shoots straight up the back brick wall.
The birds are absolutely silent. The children, recently loud
on the playground, apparently have returned to their classrooms.
The trees are unevenly garbed. Their few remaining leaves
seem vaguely silly: sequined feathers on antique hats.
Hunks of tumorous abandoned squirrel nests, knotted, hideous lumps,
cling in the crotches of the upper branches.
As though in commentary, a shrill saw buzzes a block away.
A dog, annoyed, barks twice from another direction.
In spurts and shudders, the old machine succumbs and starts,
plows through the piles of crusted fallen leaves,
the minimal greens, kicking up dust, and a faint mint scent,
in the sunset, then finally sputters and stops.
Its tank, as planned, is drained and dried for the season.
Yet, three pots of molten marigolds,
sheltered each night in rag shrouds, persevere.
Ann Neuser Lederer was born in Ohio and has also lived and worked in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Kentucky as a Registered Nurse. Prior to nursing she studied art and earned degrees in anthropology. Her poetry and nonfiction appear in online and print journals; anthologies such as Best of the Net, A Call To Nursing, Pulse, and The Country Doctor Revisited; and in her chapbooks, Approaching Freeze, The Undifferentiated, and Weaning the Babies.
