Tag: Easter

Someone Saved My Life by Magin LaSov Gregg

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Someone Saved My Life

Nightfall, Cori and I drove from Maryland
to Mississippi, listening the whole way
to Elton John, past yawning Virginia farmland
& Georgia’s red clay hills
headlong into Alabama,
where I thought I saw Jesus
trailing us at a gas station,
altar-bound, hypnotized.
At 23, I was surviving. I was waking up.
Fly away, Elton sang, as if leaving
could be simple & we could all be butterflies
fleeing the lure of our chosen cocoons.
I didn’t yet know the difference
between running away and running toward,
but I needed to unstrap
from an electric chair disguised
as first love, pale substitute
for the mother I lost too soon,
whose ashes I hauled around in a black box,
and refused to scatter,
evidence of the wreck
I was making with my life.
Elton, risen from his own cruel crosses,
glimmered like a god
lighting those dark forests of my twenties
with sequins and starshine,
the fellowship song offers,
another kind of faith.
His lullaby voice sparkled like moonlight
on a velvet curtain & put my illusions to bed.
In suffering, I was neither unique nor alone.
Saviors came in many forms ––
prophets, roadside Samaritans,
Cori, an undertaker’s daughter
who refused to let me sink into the grave.
We coasted into Jackson on Easter morning,
daylight breaking through slate clouds,
no need for church, freedom a hymn
I’d just begun to hum.

*

Magin LaSov Gregg is a neurodivergent mother and poet living in Frederick, Maryland. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, National Public Radio, Gettysburg Review and other venues. Poetry appears in The Ekphrastic Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Offerings: A Spiritual Poetry Anthology from Tiferet Journal.

SELF-PORTRAIT AS THE EASTER BUNNY by Amie Whittemore

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SELF-PORTRAIT AS THE EASTER BUNNY

Snug as a denned rabbit, my sweet niece
       asleep in my bed, I woke

to hide eggs in our small apartment.
       Husband dreaming on the futon

in the skimmed light of 5am, I slid eggs
       into shoes, behind picture frames,

under her sweater shed last night
       after we chased each other

round and round the tiny rooms:
       monsters, full of ticklish terror.

She woke and we watched
       her seek treasure—hot, I’d say

sometimes. Cold. She thought it strange
       the eggs were real, not plastic stuffed

with candy or coins. We should hide them
       again when sister gets here—

she knew then, age five, anyone
       can gift someone a mystery.

I haven’t seen her since that Easter
       when I gathered with her family

for the last time before the divorce.
       Somehow, she’s fourteen.

I thought my mythical heart would mend.
       I thought I wouldn’t miss her

now that she’s a stranger. This year, I’ve been
       recruited to hide colored eggs

for my nephew. I feed him hints,
       draw matching whiskers on our cheeks—

both of us animals, feeling brand new.

*

Amie Whittemore (she/her) is the author of four poetry collections, most recently the chapbook Hesitation Waltz (Midwest Writing Center). She was the 2020-2021 Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Her poems have won multiple awards, including a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, and her writing has appeared in Blackbird, Colorado Review, Terrain.org, Pleiades, and elsewhere.

Two Poems by Barbara Shisler

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Prophet

Fall frost threatens and from the porch
I save the pot of lush pink begonias.
They grow slowly thin on the sill
their pale discouraged threads.

Today at winter solstice
an oak tree
unfurls among the shreds.

Squirrel!
You wily prophet
cast on this dour day
a blast of Easter laughter.

*

A poem for five men

..… to capture the flowing away of the world.
Archibald McLeish

Dinner over, these five move to the deck.
One speaks, then another. They laugh, lean
on the railings, scan clouds, survey gold
at the finch feeder. Through glass I watch.

They are young, middle-aged, old:
husband, brother, son, grandsons.
I add up the years I have loved them,
a river of joy, fear, comfort, hope.

Splendid men caught
in the flowing
under sun and shadow
on this Easter afternoon.

*

As a child, Barbara Shisler loved reading and writing poetry. These days she lives in a retirement community, in Souderton, Pa., with her husband and Cairn Terrier. She continues to find writing a source of great pleasure. She has published several collections, most recently Momentary Stay (Dreamseeker Books).