noteworthy
In each issue, the editors choose a writer they would like to bring
to the readers' attention.In this issue, Burgi Zenhaeusern is highlighted.
In Zenhaeusern's poems, the purity in the moment is distilled: "a moment's blossom, or / how shrinking works: finely / serrated, slender lobes" Each moment is an accrual of sorts: "that moment all your own. I witnessed / you building Noah's Arch with blocks..." These poems lead us to the things themselves: "the apple a bite / into mealiness / and the hammer / the hammer". Say hello to a deer. Say hello to a maple leaf. Say hello to the October sun.
Maple Leaf (Japanese)
Leftovers
To a Deer in Rock Creek Park
I Witnessed You
[after days of sun gray]
[mottled shimmer the remnant]
Celandine the Lesser & I
Back at the Pool
My Claro Walnut Paperweight
October Sun
or the lover that was
not.
A scarlet curl picked up and dropped
onto deep-green
wax fingers of a hellebore—
a moment’s blossom, or
how shrinking works: finely
serrated, slender lobes
twisting inward. I so wanted
to believe.
A leaf,
and what shrinking is
left to it. This red
stalls my rake.
Raw material for
New beginnings by rot
Absorbed by the yard’s soft parts or someone else’s
Splinters of bone or a fragile skull
I expected to find
The downs I did—snow white
because the plucking, methodical and fierce, had to come first—
Here and there, but somewhere quite off
By the time I checked in spring
Of the Wood Duck that plummeted out of the sky into our yard
in the talons of her predator, as big as the juvenile raptor herself (impossible to make off
with it)
From the subsequent meal
while we went from breakfast to lunch
That winter morning
Remains
Of a gift and its giver:
William Cooper, zoologist, collector of specimens, to his friend, Charles Lucien
A name: Accipiter cooperii,
since 1828, authoritatively by a Bonaparte (Charles Lucien), ornithologist
(otherwise called: Big Blue Darter, Chicken Hawk, Striker; Swift and Black-Capped)
did you know
how to wait
just long enough
this time for me
to pass you
on my lonely
stretch between
goal and goal, or was it
your whim, or a vague
sense of danger
that let you hesitate
there on the side
of the road like
dusk gathering shape
giggle into the reverent silence
for a poet laureate and his work, look up
from your reading, delighted
you’ve brought
with what you were hearing.
At home, the words on the page
me to my limits
wouldn’t reproduce the effect, not even
read out aloud;
you’ve kept
that moment all your own. I witnessed
you building Noah’s Arc with blocks, and a
me in line
girl-killing machine; you showing
teddy bear the Easter tree;
staring someone down; triumphant,
you’re a man now
and what you’ve taken
lording it over your dad in my arms;
your shock at my sudden anger.
with you how it will bend
You swallowed a whole piece of ginger
without blinking; clamped down
your steps
on my nipple with hard gums
and a broad smile.
may your feet
be strong and carry you far
You played peek-a-boo with me by turning
from my voice my fears
your head to the wall. You cut
my pride know that
it feels
out and glued
an army of candles onto
a piece of paper to fight
my stubborn cough—at least
that’s what you said.
good to stay back and watch
you go
after days of sun gray
feels unreal
all day like dusk
an apple on
the pile shifts slightly
and up the street a hammer
goes from head to head
the same few
measures on wood
erratic spurts through dry leaves
of squirrels chasing
after each other
pushed clouds
sometimes you don’t
see what is
rearing up to speak
from you
until you say it
recognition always
too late
the apple a bite
into mealiness
and the hammer
the hammer
mottled shimmer the remnant
of a shower in early March
quivering on the flagstones
a dusting of orange
on roughened rinds
the cobwebbing above
our street gleams
and turns
gray again
a stiffness still between
shoulder blades moisture
has begun to seep into
the tight-fisted crust
Though nothing is less about this
fig buttercup carpeting my yard in early spring
with lacquered green and tiny wheels of yellow spikes.
At first, it crowded into moist seams
and barren patches only—an invasion by cunning
no less—
Another spring, and its tight fists press
against what I planted forcing me to weeks of digging
into the lacquered green and tiny wheels of yellow spikes:
out slip tubers, the hard seed unclenches
spilling into the mud, chance camouflage for any small slug:
no hardness less likely to appeal than this.
Alongside quartered worms I work the sticky lumps:
they bored right back. By June, the green gloss is turning
fallow in mock defeat, gone the wheels and spikes.
I hurry on, picking through splayed rosettes for beads
to point me to the buried cluster seats of next year’s spawn
for nothing less than less of this
latest lacquered green with tiny wheels of yellow spikes.
Raptors are circling in a clear sky.
On a lawn-chair, I’m far flung
from home, the frayed sense of belonging;
back from being the absentee
dropping my bags in the old bedroom,
greeting the horizon like an old friend:
its reassurance whenever
I was reminded that I had changed
into a guest. Out of sight
a splashing beat. I’m not home:
relief and heartbreak. Each in its spiral
the birds are riding the updraft.
Swirling, iridescent, reddish-brown,
smooth drop I like to cradle
in my palm. Tightly figured weight
of the unspoken, a tilting underneath
rich with his chuckle. No words
to turn and turn: we simply met again
and parted. Sweet weighing
this fullness; still, I wonder
how to utterly forget and keep
delightful blessed and fresh, how
not caress this memory to death, send
hope adrift forever. How, and if.
Shiny shell from the wide-crowned tree
mooring my wait, heavy with sand.
Glitter and sharpness
sever sky from crowns today.
No dulling the edge.
Burgi Zenhaeusern's poems appear in Oversound, Heron Tree, Antiphon, Forage Poetry, and elsewhere. She served as a translation editor for the poetry anthology Knocking on the Door of the White House (Zozobra publishing, 2017).
