Above Elizabeth, New Jersey
The bridge between Staten Island and Elizabeth
hangs so high above the water, I can’t tell
if the drab, grey boomerang below me is a bird
or its reflection. As I stutter toward New Jersey,
the Arthur Kill a stew of oil tankers, cormorants
whipstitching jagged seams across the sky,
I am my own fogged mirror, woman-girl,
my eyes turned inward. It will be dark
before I get to Plymouth; already, clouds ravel
to pastel threads, denuding the horizon, early moon
a vulgar eye. Arrival will be chaos, the night
fracturing into shards of discordant sound —
nephews bare-calved in the sharpness of mid-March,
shouting across the frozen yard in soccer shorts,
dog salting the air with shallow barks. My sister
in the window, waiting, her face an underwater echo
of my own. I’ll navigate the winter-yellowed hill,
step inside and find my mother angry, always
angry, and my father, treading water
in a sea of fish-slick thoughts, forgetting
and remembering, the living room a familiar
mystery. I wonder about Elizabeth, men fishing
in the Kill with their jacketed children, picture
their homes torch-bright in the middle distance
past enigmatic factories whispering smoke,
beyond the crackling Eiffel towers
of the power lines. Inside, marshmallow couches,
laminate tables, too many chairs, small fire
snapping behind its dusk-black grate. Everything soft,
easy. Fathers shed boots, glide sock-footed
to their seats, small children in their wake like paper
boats, adrift in a river I don’t want to cross.
*
To the Chimpanzee Mother who Carries an Ironwood Branch in Remembrance of Her Infant
I see the way you cradle
that blooming bough
against the blunt sorrow
of your stomach, having lost
even the small, still body, grief
upon grief. The way mourning wears you
like a pair of gloves, demanding
you do something
with your hands. When my unborn child
stopped growing, someone left me
a potted rosebush – I planted it
in peat and loam and watched it
wither anyway, loss
upon loss. The way we just can’t
keep a body alive, the way we reach
for something green to hold
when our ghosts pass through.
*
Steph Sundermann-Zinger is a queer poet living and writing in the Baltimore area. Her work explores themes of identity, relationship, and connection with the natural world and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Avenue, Blue Unicorn, Little Patuxent Review, Lines + Stars, Literary Mama, Split Rock Review, Writers Resist, and other journals. She was the 2023 recipient of the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize and a fall 2024 Writer in Residence for Yellow Arrow Publishing.