Tag: Lily Jarman-Reisch

Two Poems by Lily Jarman-Reisch

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The Delta

I speed down I-40, hazy with heat,
pocked by seared gullies,
pass raptors perched on power lines

far from Baltimore’s sirens
and wee hour whimpering
of the snubbed spaniel upstairs,
next door couple grunting
like my ex rutting
the lover he left me for,
their groans cresting
while I lie in the dark,
hands over my ears,
burning to bolt for the last cliffs
of the furthest coast, for the silence
of a pathless peak or deep canyon floor

as I blaze through this sun-flayed
flatland, car window lowered
hoping for westerlies scented with creosote,
rare duet of rain on rock,

heading for the border
where the Colorado is supposed to pool,
imagining a mayhem of marsh wrens,

but reach the delta,
dried and dead
of sound,
save for a yowling
dog, zippered voice of a desert fly
on a breeze of benzene.

*

Stalking Maryland’s fugitive zebra,

I park on some cul-de-sac,
strain to listen,
head craning out the car window,
waiting
far too long
for a nicker, a snort,
a glimpse of a striped hide
hidden in the suburb,
black/white bands of a runaway
from a livestock auction in Tennessee, escaped
as the bidding began like a breakaway
stallion that throws his jockey,
jumps the fence, bolts away,
leaving the rider splayed in dirt,
betrayed by one he knew so well,
gaping after the disappeared beast
like a stray sniffing for a phantom
scent, wishing the dull air would swell
with the sound of hooves,
a thrown over longing for a lover’s return,
I keep waiting
for a wild African horse to gallop
through a subdivision, wondering
if I am in the right spot
on the right day,
if I hear huffing
on a puff of wind,
hoofbeats
above the hiss
of insects in the grass.

*

Lily Jarman-Reisch is a 2024 Pushcart Prize recipient, poetry reader for The Los Angeles Review, and a Contributing Editor for Pushcart Prize XLIX. Her poems appear in Amsterdam Quarterly, CALYX, Collateral, Mobius, One, Pangyrus, Plainsongs, Pushcart Prize XLVIII, San Pedro River Review, Slant Poetry, among others. She was a journalist in Washington, D.C., and Athens, Greece, where she lived aboard a small boat she sailed throughout the Ionian and Aegean Seas, and has held administrative and teaching positions at the Universities of Michigan and Maryland.

Two Poems by Lily Jarman-Reisch

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Affairs in Order

We were so thorough,
giving our kids instructions,
account names and passwords
should we suddenly die
while on this island for so long
trying to weave ourselves back together.
Even noted who to invite to our funeral.
Except, I realize,
shaded next to my husband
under a beach umbrella,

maybe she should be on that list.
He’d want her to know,
to be there. She might attend,
with me gone. But then she’d see
photos of our life together –
Soul kissing in the high Sierra
or when I was chemo bald,
my face in his hands. That time we
made the most of a blizzard,
piggy-backed on a sled.
Would she wonder
if she really knew him,
still mourn their romance?
And him?

When he deleted their texts,
did his phone, a hive
sheltering their intimacies,
become a shrine,
her name and number sacred relics?
Does he return to her on a breath
of rosemary, grieve
for lost things that won’t happen –
his fingers braided with her hair,
hers mapping the marriage
line of his palm?

*

Reunited

I still think you’ll rise from the floor
you collapsed on, your wine glass,
its shards rejoined, brought back
to your open lips.

Even on our wedding day, I wondered
who would go first,
if I’d wake one night
to your stopped
rhythm, if you’d wake to mine,
your arm on my mute chest.
And all the what if’s since:
if each clink of raised glasses was the last.
If I was laughing at your final
one-liner before you were downed
by a mass shooter, a speeding truck,
or I was.
If each word was the parting one–
the voice in my head yelling Stop! Stop!
as I yelled at you for leaving
your shoes where I would trip on them,
irritated when you talked too much,
my last thought
while one of us still breathed.

They tell me to choose clothes for your burial.
I picture the suit you wore to marry me
sagging, rotting in a dirt-smothered box.
I clutch your comb, your slippers,
gut the laundry for your socks, a t-shirt
still sour, damp with your sweat.
I put them all on,
curl under covers
on your side of the bed,
find a hair on your pillowcase
and swallow it.

*

Lily Jarman-Reisch is a 2024 Pushcart Prize recipient, poetry reader for The Los Angeles Review, and a Contributing Editor for Pushcart Prize XLIX. Her poems appear in Amsterdam Quarterly, CALYX, Collateral, Mobius, One, Pangyrus, Plainsongs, Pushcart Prize XLVIII, San Pedro River Review, Slant Poetry, among others. She was a journalist in Washington, D.C., and Athens, Greece, where she lived aboard a small boat she sailed throughout the Ionian and Aegean Seas, and has held administrative and teaching positions at the Universities of Michigan and Maryland.