Three Poems by Donna Spruijt-Metz

Severed

This far into your death—I am most functional
in the mornings.

By afternoon, I have faded—
no direction.

I trim the wilting flowers—give them
new water—an extra day.

Time, for flowers,
must work differently. Perhaps

I have given them a whole new life
with my water, my scissors,

my opposable thumbs
—my brief power—

*

What rises from the quiet

is the noise
of your absence. The roar of your sudden
departure—constant reminders
that I am on my own.

For instance, the water bill—the long
conversation with the lady at the
Department of Water and Power—
where they have all the power

and we have a mysterious leak.
But it is my leak now. Just mine.

Oh, you—son of a master plumber—
you would have tracked it down
with the residue of your father’s glee.

I am the daughter of a jazz pianist—
all I can do is listen for a rhythmic dripping.

I can’t fix the sound system—
it gave out last night. You had MacGyvered it—
daisy-chained remote to remote to remote.

Now all that’s left of your secret system
are the colorful buttons, the dead
little rectangles.

* 

The Retelling

I have a new friend—she’s halfway
across the world.
She asks good questions, about before
the after of you—and so I retell old stories.
They take new shapes in her listening.

I sit at the morning table
—poached egg and widowhood
for breakfast—dictating
into my phone,
I falter, erase, retrace.

Memory is like that—retreating into it
is like that—a strange man
backing my newly dead father’s Torch Red
Thunderbird out of our garage—
my mother, wild—ferocious, screaming,

“Get that car out of here!
I never want to see it again!”
I’m the small girl who doesn’t
understand. The car was so pretty.

I loved it.
It smelled of him—
and it was just like him—showy
and always leaving.

*

Donna Spruijt-Metz’s second collection, ‘To Phrase a Prayer for Peace’, was published in March 2025 (Wildhouse Publishing). Her debut poetry collection is ‘General Release from the Beginning of the World’ (2023, Free Verse Editions). She is an emeritus psychology professor, MacDowell fellow, rabbinical school drop-out, and former classical flutist. Her chapbooks include ‘Slippery Surfaces’, ‘And Haunt the World’ (with Flower Conroy), and ‘Dear Ghost’ (winner, 2023 Harbor Review Editor’s prize). Her translation from the Dutch of Lucas Hirsch’s ‘Wu Wei Eats an Egg’ (Ben Yehuda press) and her full-length collaboration with Flower Conroy, ‘And Scuttle My Ballon’ (Picture Show Press) were both released in 2025. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, Tahoma Literary Review, One Art, Alaska Quarterly Review, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She’s an emeritus professor, MacDowell fellow, rabbinical school drop-out, and former classical flutist. She gets restless.