Tag: Margaret Dornaus
To My Sister on the Anniversary of Her Death from Covid by Margaret Dornaus
To My Sister on the Anniversary
of Her Death from Covid
It’s been two years, and there are
those who still ask me to believe
you’re in a better place. Or
that we all are now that all is
said and done. Now that life is
back to normal, or at least
back to a semblance of the life
we once knew. Remember
how you liked to say you were
our mother? How you’d take us all
on weekend outings to bowling
alleys and drive-ins. The larger than
life images of good and evil projected
on a big screen. How we’d watch
Kong battling Godzilla, wide-eyed,
sure of nothing more than our own story.
The way summer nights embraced us,
the way starshine followed us home.
*
Margaret Dornaus holds an MFA in the translation of poetry from the University of Arkansas. A semifinalist in Naugatuck River Review’s 13th annual Narrative Poetry Contest, she had the privilege of editing and publishing a pandemic-themed anthology—behind the mask: haiku in the time of Covid-19—through her small literary press Singing Moon in 2020. Her first book of poetry, Prayer for the Dead: Collected Haibun & Tanka Prose, won a 2017 Merit Book Award from the Haiku Society of America. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in I-70 Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Minyan Magazine, MockingHeart Review, ONE ART, Silver Birch Press, and The Ekphrastic Review.
He Brings Me Figs by Margaret Dornaus
He Brings Me Figs
He’s worried I don’t like them, though
I’ve told him that I did. The truth is
I haven’t had the nerve to try them
yet . . . But when he handed me his
preserves, it seemed more than a little
unkind not to take them. I suppose
I could have told him I was just
waiting for the right moment. For
that special occasion when I’d break
the jar’s seal wide open to ladle fig
after fig free of the sweet syrupy
tidal wave of sugar contained within
a small aquarium of riches, spoon
them over plain vanilla ice cream
I’ll serve guests I’m not expecting.
So when he asks again whether
I enjoyed the fruits of his labor,
I answer, Yes. I’d forgotten
what it’s like to hold a universe
of hope in my hands. To let a heady
bouquet of summer flowers ripen
without worrying what may or
may not pass. To be free
from all but the sure, exquisite
knowledge that even small
gifts require savoring.
*
Margaret Dornaus holds an MFA in the translation of poetry from the University of Arkansas. A semifinalist in Naugatuck River Review’s 13th annual Narrative Poetry Contest, she had the privilege of editing and publishing a pandemic-themed anthology—behind the mask: haiku in the time of Covid-19—through her small literary press Singing Moon in 2020. Her first book of poetry, Prayer for the Dead: Collected Haibun & Tanka Prose, won a 2017 Merit Book Award from the Haiku Society of America. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in I-70 Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Minyan Magazine, MockingHeart Review, ONE ART, Silver Birch Press, and The Ekphrastic Review.
Two Poems by Margaret Dornaus
The Heart is Not a Stone
after Danusha Laméris
You cannot hold it in your hands,
or kick it to one side to clear your path.
Or toss it in the air to see how far
it travels . . . skipping as it does
across still water. It is neither this
nor that, but by its nature soft
though not without sharp
edges. It is a dozen songbirds
singing as the light returns, a child
at play, a lover calling out
your name: a reminder there is
no love without the loss. No poetry.
Perhaps then it’s enough to speak
of smaller things—a pocket,
say, a stone—until you also find
your heart. Holding on. Letting
go. Speaking before daring
to be spoken for.
*
But You Don’t Die from It
“The yellow star? Oh, what of it? You don’t die from it.”
—from Night, Chapter One, by Elie Wiesel
At Buchenwald, Liliane takes two stones from her pocket.
Small specimens collected from a desecrated cemetery in Potsdam.
She places one stone on a cairn overlooking Buchenwald’s
courtyard, where tourists are snapping pictures off
their bucket list: the frozen watchtower clock displaying
the time of liberation; the arched entryway gates
proclaiming Arbeit Macht Frei without a shred
of irony; the lightning-struck oak where Goethe sat
on this hillside above Weimar’s cobblestoned ode
to life and literature and music. A month ago
when Liliane and I met in a New York restaurant
that served schnitzel, she asked if I was Jewish.
It’s your name, she said, explaining she’d studied
surnames given Jews by their oppressors.
I told her that my name had haunted me since
childhood. How my classmates taunted
me with nicknames: dormouse; doormat; doornail,
as in dead as . . . How at night I’d wished
for a name that sounded more American, less
German. It’s just a name, I said that day
Liliane and I became friends. Long before
she placed her second stone in my left hand.
*
Margaret Dornaus holds an MFA in the translation of poetry from the University of Arkansas. A semifinalist in Naugatuck River Review’s 13th annual Narrative Poetry Contest, she had the privilege of editing and publishing a pandemic-themed anthology—behind the mask: haiku in the time of Covid-19—through her small literary press Singing Moon in 2020. Her first book of poetry, Prayer for the Dead: Collected Haibun & Tanka Prose, won a 2017 Merit Book Award from the Haiku Society of America. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in I-70 Review, MacQueen’s, Minyan Magazine, MockingHeart Review, Red Earth Review, Silver Birch Press, and The Ekphrastic Review.