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Tag: Linda Blaskey
Three Poems by Linda Blaskey
Scarf
I’m driving home pleased with the gift I’ve purchased
for a friend when I see cedar waxwings lying so near
the edge of the road I am forced to steer toward the centerline.
They are drunk on the fermented berries of Fall,
some staggering about still.
My first husband, on the last day of his life—
we, divorced ten years—drunk-walked in the road
and was hit by a drunk driver, the two a better match
than we ever were.
The weave I have chosen is variegated colors of three
of a year’s seasons, because sometimes that is all we have.
*
Fox Skull by the Side of the Road
It’s bleached to a purity we don’t often see.
Teeth Hollywood white, the color we all strive for.
It has been here, by the mailbox, for months,
first intact then the slow disintegration, joint-sutures giving up their grip.
It’s all here, picked clean, scattered – parietal bone,
maxilla and mandible with canines and incisors fixed tight.
Despite the loss of interest by carrion eaters, despite deterioration,
there is something that rests uneasy, like the days
my skin doesn’t fit quite right.
I could gather the shards, toss them, but there’s vibration in such beauty
that tells me it, eyeless, wants to see this through to the end.
*
Paying for Lunch at the Arby’s Drive-Thru
The man is tall, with a tat below the sleeve of his tee.
When he leans his face close to the window to tell me
seven fifty-five, a lizard moves behind his eyes.
The small silver cross that adorns his ear hypnotizes
as he offers his change. I can feel it already—
the quarter, the dime, two nickels— the burn beginning,
the bite in the palm of my hand.
*
Linda Blaskey is editor at Quartet, an online poetry journal featuring the work of women fifty and over; poetry/interview editor emerita of Broadkill Review, and past coordinator of the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2014, and numerous journals and anthologies. She is the author of the prize-winning chapbook, Farm, the poetry collection, White Horses, and co-author of Walking the Sunken Boards, and Season of Harvest. She is the recipient of three Fellowship Grants from DDOA, including the 2022 Masters in Literature: Poetry. She currently lives in Delaware.
Two Poems by Linda Blaskey
Snow Geese Land Beyond the Tree Line
the oldest snow goose on record was 27.5 years old. It was shot in Texas.
— Cornell Lab of Ornithology
I can hear them as I swing the axe to break ice in water troughs—
their wings sound like a peloton of bicycles passing.
Their voices, a cacophony as they circle,
sound like wishes, or dreams, rising. They mate
for life, the female building the nest from feathers
plucked from her own breast. She is often abandoned
for long periods by her mate.
I break through the ice, shards flying, water bubbling.
Down the lane kitchen lights glow in early dawn, Thermoses filled
and steaming, as hunters suit up in winter camouflage,
weapons oiled and ready. Permits pinned to their chests.
*
Cat’s Eye
How the pupil opens for more light
as the eye tracks a leaf in its tumble across the lawn,
then contracts to a protective sliver as sun lifts
higher above the horizon.
That crystal globe floating a golden iris—
I understand why the marble is called such.
Would that our hearts could open wide enough
to light these chambers that have become a home for grief.
That is what I have of you now, this polished ball of sorrow—
all that we were, seeking the wide lens of illumination.
*
Linda Blaskey is the recipient of three Fellowship Grants from Delaware Division of the Arts including the 2022 Masters in Literature: Poetry. She is editor at Quartet, an online poetry journal featuring the work of women fifty and over. Her work has been selected for inclusion in Best New Poets, and for the North Carolina Poetry on the Bus project. She is author of the prize-winning chapbook, Farm, the full-length collection, White Horses, and co-author of Walking the Sunken Boards, and Season of Harvest. She grew up in Kansas and Arkansas and now lives in Delaware.
Two Poems by Linda Blaskey
Vulpecula: Little Fox Constellation
This morning, a crippled fox, by parasite or car impact,
I don’t know, pulled its hindquarters to the center
of the east pasture.
I herded the dying creature, with my pickup, out of the field
into its natal forest where it curled under a tree.
It staggered and I could have (or should have?) crushed it
with the truck’s tires or beaten it with the flat back of a shovel head,
but elected to leave it to the comfort of familiarity.
I turned the truck and drove away; released
the horses to gallop circles on this ground now changed.
A man I know who farms the next field over, would have cursed
the fox, would have drawn pistol and bullet. But I choose the word
stewardship for what I do. What I have done. (What have I done?)
At the table, the rest of the house sleeping,
I shave off a curl of bitter cheese, eat a cold plum.
Cassiopeia in her chair, doomed for her eternity
to contemplate her mistakes, hovers over the woods.
Deeper still, in space, the small constellation attached
to no myth will pulse briefly tonight with added lumens
though no one will see its effort for over 300 light years
and then only through the mirrored assist of an astronomer’s scope.
*
Killing Horses
We choose words more comfortable.
Euthanize. Put down. Put to sleep.
But kill is the word. Single syllabic. Hard.
A slug of phenobarb plunged into the vein nestled in the jugular’s groove.
Sometimes if they are down when the bolus hits their heart, they stand.
Those magnificent muscles full of memory bring them to their feet.
Then the collapse, the vet saying stand back, stand back.
Kill: Etymology: Old English cwellan (to murder, execute).
The vet draws up the syringe, says it’s hard to lose the good ones.
I stroke the familiar of his chestnut coat, then walk away.
Abandon: Etymology: Middle English forleven (to leave behind).
This is too large a death to witness.
*
Linda Blaskey (she/her) is the recipient of two Fellowship Grants in Literature from Delaware Division of the Arts. She is poetry/interview editor emerita for Broadkill Review, is coordinator for the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize, and current editor at Quartet. Her work has been selected for inclusion in Best New Poets, and for the North Carolina Poetry on the Bus project. She is author of the chapbook, Farm, the full-length collection, White Horses, and co-author of Walking the Sunken Boards.
She grew up in Kansas and Arkansas and now lives in Delaware.