Four Poems by Robbi Nester

Vesuvius at Home

        I judge from my Geography
        Volcanoes nearer here
        — Emily Dickinson

I remember the clatter my mother’s pressure cooker made
on winter afternoons, how it spat steam, played a tune.
Sometimes she sang along. Once, the gauge shot off,
embedding like a bullet in the ceiling. She just stood there,
gazing, as green goo geysered, slight smile on her lips.
My mother loved her pot. I’d even say she was inspired
by its potential, and her own. She knew volcanos can be
still for years, though magma brews beneath. Maybe
she sensed they were alike, she and this pot, that she
could capture the force of the words that fueled her,
the ones she muttered under her breath all day in two
languages. She trained me to be her surrogate, to believe
my words had heft, taught me to embrace the danger,
learn the craft of channeling all the rich profusion
that nascent power might allow.

* 

Worm Farm

Near the end, you knew that you were dying,
though we never spoke of it, just went on
shopping for new socks and the special tidbits
you loved to snack on, though you had no more
than four teeth left to chew that crusty bread,
the Porterhouse we cut for you in ever-smaller bits.
You went on shredding peels and scraps to fertilize
your Meyer lemon and pomegranate trees, spoke to
the red wrigglers in your farm as though they were
your pets. “I can’t die,” you said, just a week before
you did. “What would happen to my worms?”

* 

Ambivalence

        Memory is / the past reversed
        — Catherine Bowman, “Duende”

When I mouthed off, defiant in the face of my father’s
sudden rage, he used to say “No one will ever love you
but your parents.” He said it ruefully, so I knew he’d heard it
many times when he was young. He complained his mother
held him back. She wouldn’t let him work as the apprentice
to a veterinarian or train to be a jockey because they wouldn’t
feed him Kosher food. He didn’t speak to her for years.
But I had to wonder what he meant by “love,” if it was love
he felt when he hit me with his belt, claiming all the while
it hurt him more than me.

* 

I have lived in many houses

but seldom think of them–except for the row-house on Stirling Street,
3 bedrooms, a garage, and basement, where laundry hung indoors
all winter on makeshift lines in the dark unfinished basement, haunt
of many nightmares, prison and sanctuary. I remember noisy radiators,
hyperactive poltergeists, rust-red brick exterior, steep flights of concrete
stairs, black and white tile in the bathroom, errant splotch of paint marring
the chessboard pattern of the floor. Neighbors like monarchs in their
lawn chairs watched every car and truck dodge dogs and children, balls
badly thrown. I sold it to an immigrant. Like almost everyone who lived
there, my parents were children of immigrants. All of them longed for
their community, but scarred beyond repair, turned on each other. I was glad
to leave that place, yet it’s still the house I always think of when I think of home.

*

Robbi Nester is a retired college educator who has never stopped teaching in one way or another. She is the author of 5 collections of poetry, the most recent being About to Disappear, an ekphrastic collection that will be published by Shanti Arts. She has also edited 3 anthologies and curates and hosts two monthly poetry readings on Zoom, Verse-Virtual Monthly Reading and Words With You, part of The Poetry Salon Online. Learn more about her work at http://www.robbinester.net.