Tag: Robbi Nester

Feast by Robbi Nester

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Feast

It’s not holiday banquets I hunger for, the turkeys my
mother labored over, the China that arrived with her
from England, with its grand platters and scalloped plates,
It’s not the gravy or mashed potatoes, piled high like clouds.
I miss those ordinary Sunday mornings, when I would wake
at sunrise to read the funny papers, walk the dog down
to the playground, startling the flocks of starlings settled
in the dew-damp field, tracing their hieroglyphic prints
in the soft ground. Every week, my mother slipped
a wrinkled dollar bill or two into my hand, some change,
and sent me to the deli for bagels and smoked fish.
We sat down at the cluttered table, didn’t speak,
devoted to our task of dividing still-warm bagels
into perfect halves, splitting golden whitefish
at the seam, picking off each fragrant shred
with the smallest silver forks I’ve ever seen.
Sometimes, there was a strip of velvety
smoked sable, unctuous and rich, fresh
squeezed orange juice so bright it hurt my eyes.
I can’t think of any other meal I’d rather have
again, especially if it means we’ll be together,
all quarrels stilled, as we so seldom were
at any other time.

*

Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry and editor of three anthologies. She is a retired college educator and elected member of the Academy of American Poets. Her website is at http://www.RobbiNester.net

In the August of my eighth year, I started a business. by Robbi Nester

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In the August of my eighth year, I started a business.

I never cared much about money. It was more about
the need to make connections. One year, that led me
to create a caterpillar sitting gig. All the other kids
in the neighborhood had plans to go off on vacation
with their families. Each one brought a shoebox full
of caterpillars, striped or green, occasionally, a fat
black one with bristles and an iridescent purple
belly, all clinging to half-eaten oak leaves. I laid
them in the basement shelter I made out of old
window screens. Some kids came back in a few
days and claimed their caterpillars, handing over
sweaty nickels or slick dimes. But most arrived
too late—after the creatures had pupated in
a corner of the screen, their chrysalises
shiny green or soft and brown as spoiled
bananas, white cocoons bound tightly to
the wire, factories of change no one could
explain. Some of them emerged as moths,
escaping into the basement of our house,
spawning on any surface they could find,
to my mother’s consternation, leaving me
with nothing but the spent cocoons,
like shotgun shells on an abandoned
target range, the flutter of dusty wings.

*

Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry and editor of three anthologies. She is a retired college educator and elected member of the Academy of American Poets. Her website is at robbinester.net

What I Loved by Robbi Nester

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What I Loved

As a child, I often visited my grandmother and cousins
in West Oak Lane, straight lines of dark brick rowhomes,
old trees, so wide you couldn’t get your arms around them.
In summer, people sat out on the stoop and watched
neighbors in their somber suits and hats parade
to service in the tiny synagogue where my uncle
served as sexton. In the back of each house, there was
an open space, a paradise of gardens, some gated.
I loved the ones with a reflecting ball, precisely
in the center, mirroring the bees and sulfur yellow
butterflies. I thought I saw some other country
there, one that I’d explore on some dull day
when my cousins were busy with their chores
or their piano lessons, and I was left to roller
skate for hours on the cracked concrete behind
their house. I didn’t like the other decorations—
plastic flamingos or painted plaster gnomes,
objects with no mystery about them, far preferred
to peer between the iron filagree or wooden slats,
pretending that I stood on soft green grass
instead of forever banished, on the other side.

*

Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry and editor of three anthologies. She is a retired college educator and elected member of the Academy of American Poets. Her website is at http://www.RobbiNester.net

The Inheritance by Robbi Nester

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The Inheritance

At 93, my mother was eggshell and frost, folded linen,
the faded smell of lavender sachet. Her eyes were
muddy pools where nothing swam. When I was small,
her lips flamed when she smiled, scarlet as a struck
match, like the roses in the yard, so tempting
to the iridescent beetles unraveling the petals
of the tightest buds. I used to go into her purse
and turn the golden tube to make the red stub rise,
sniff it, sweet-smelling as the candy lipstick
at the corner store. The color made my mother
seem exotic, a parrot perching in the snowy oak.
A bright scarf tied around her throat, she didn’t
look or sound like other people’s mothers.
They never wore white gloves to shop downtown,
or spoke of traveling to Paris with their families
on a ship, or standing on the top of Table Mountain
studying the spot where two seas meet, one calm
and glassy green, the other angry grey. Even the sour
praises of my father’s family couldn’t dull her flame,
not yet. She was full of light. Her family regularly
arrived like migratory birds, bright-colored, chattering.
Drawn by her songs and stories of her uncle
Isaac Rosenberg, artist and poet, who died
when she was two in World War One, I dreamed,
aching to explore the world within the covers
of his books and far beyond. She said I could
escape the small dark world we were immured in.
And yet, I wondered at the size of her small
life, all the care spent covering the chipped gray
kitchenette with a bright cloth and matching
napkins, the way that she presided at the empty table.

*

Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry and editor of three anthologies. She is a retired college educator and elected member of the Academy of American Poets. Her website is at http://www.RobbiNester.net

What We Made of Them by Robbi Nester

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What We Made of Them

When my son was three or four, raccoons inhabited
the sewer outside our house. Every night, they’d
line up in the dark opening to the storm drain,
a neighborhood as populous as ours, eyes glowing
like stars gone nova. My son called them “psycorns.”
I don’t know where he got the word, but it suited them,
lurking as they did close to the dumpster, snarling
if we threatened to come near, choosing the delicacies
they most preferred from torn plastic garbage bags,
full of wilted heads of lettuce, flaccid carrots, spoiled
beef stew they extracted with their agile fingers.
My neighbor came home one day from the grocery
to find a raccoon and her kits standing in her kitchen.
They had entered through the dog door, foraged
in the pantry for the ten-pound bag of kibble,
ravaged the fruit bowl. She had to call a wildlife
specialist to remove the raccoon family
from the house before they shredded the sofa,
filled the place with fleas. How far these urban-dwelling
raccoons were from the meticulous and clever creatures
I had seen on nature films, with pointed, elven faces,
washing up before they ate. Orchards and woods
are mostly gone now. Sewers serve as raccoon
freeways, shortcuts to the closest park or vacant lot.

*

Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry and editor of three anthologies. She is a retired college educator and elected member of the Academy of American Poets. Her website is at http://www.RobbiNester.net

Two Poems by Robbi Nester

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Dream it Right
Inspired by “Rogue Dream,” by Melanie Figg

I ride the city bus to my old high school. It’s my first
day at this school, but this time, my stomach isn’t
lurching like a Chevy with a bum transmission.
No headache in the spot between my eyes.
The school building, that black box, doesn’t
look like an ill omen, a cardboard carton
inside of which a small child might fall asleep
and be accidentally crushed by a delivery van
taking a shortcut down the driveway. It’s x,
yet this time, maybe I can solve the problem.

She enters the bathroom on the second floor.
Those girls are there, the ones who threw her
down the stairs outside the cafeteria every
day at lunch time. Their hair, teased high,
glitters like spun-sugar, eyelids the iridescent
wings of butterflies, spiky lashes the insect’s
folded legs, They grip Virginia Slims in their
long fingers, turn to look out of the window.
It seems, despite the paint and pretense,
they aren’t the monsters she imagined.

But I can’t balance the equation, never
arrive at the cafeteria, still eating lunch
in the bathroom on the second floor.

*

Miss Rabinowitz Shows Me the Ropes

At five, I could hardly wait to go to school,
with all the big kids in the neighborhood
to learn at last to write my name and climb
the highest monkey bars. I thought school
would be one big story time, like at the library,
kind teacher, smiling kids. When I first saw
the teacher, Miss Rabinowitz, I was sure
she was the one I’d dreamed about.
She was beautiful, so tall, with the smile
I had imagined, though it was painted on.
Her hair was perfect, every strand lacquered
in place, pearly smile serene as any swan.
But anyone could tell you—swans are mean.
They beat you with their wings, stab at your
face with strong beaks. Miss Rabinowitz
played favorites. She frowned at boys,
always dirty and unruly, rude, liked only
the dimpled girls with shiny hair, braided
neatly into plaits, who sat demurely
at their desks with ankles crossed
below their rosy knees. Hands folded,
they didn’t ask, as I did, why the sun
never shined at night, why worms came out
after it rained, how flies walked on the ceiling.
I was untidy, and always broke my crayons,
held the pencil all wrong, in my left hand,
socks unraveling around my ankles, too
short and sharp-eyed, I never would be
ladylike in any way. One day, in art class,
she told us to draw a picture. I wanted
to discover a new color, laid the crayon
thick onto the paper until it tore, a waxy
mess of an uncertain hue, like a fire
smoldering in the basement. It could have
been the time to show us color charts,
explain how mixing shades creates new
shades, or had us study photos of famous
paintings, where faces might be blue
or green, but instead, she pursed her
perfect lips, holding out my picture
with the tips of painted fingers and
declared, “There is no such color.
Is this supposed to be a tree? Trees
are brown and green.” I looked up at her
flawless face and saw she hadn’t seen
the leaves in fall or touched the ashy bark
of beech trees. I knew then that school
would not be what I hoped, a sanctuary
and a home. I would have to make my own.

*

Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry and editor of three anthologies. She is a retired college educator and elected member of the Academy of American Poets. Her website is at http://www.RobbiNester.net

Two Poems by Robbi Nester

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Closet

As a child, my parents’ bedroom was my playground—
especially my mother’s vanity, lacquered to a shiny
honey-brown, with carved feet arching like a horse’s
fetlock. I would stare into her mirror till my face grew
strange, pore through photos of her family in the drawer.
Their faces are still burned into my brain. Besides
the vanity, I loved their closet, where old purses
smelled of lavender sachet and purple sens sens,
old lipsticks’ tarnished canisters shone in the shadow
of her clothes. Here I found those broad-shouldered
jackets my mother used to wear during the war.
I wore them in high school with the scarves and
jewelry she bought in Italy. In comparison, my father’s
meager horde of shirts and slacks seemed sad, hiding
in the darkest corner. His few shirts sagged, dejected,
on the hangers, all blue, with breast pockets where
he would put his pens. His fearsome belts, still
for once, hung on a nail. My parents didn’t seem
disturbed that I was trying on their clothes, shuffling
across the floor in their big shoes, exploring everything.
I was quiet, couldn’t hurt myself or destroy the clothes
or jewelry. I had to leave them where I found them,
never take them from the room, not unless I asked,
a rule I gladly minded. Years later they were all still
there, furred with dust. The rats and roaches ran riot
through my former playroom, gone to rags.
It was a kind of justice, I suppose: I was the one
responsible for cleaning it all up, the family
wreckage fallen to its one beleaguered heir.

*

BBG

At age 13 I joined a Jewish youth group. My mother
wanted me to go to dances once a month. I couldn’t
dance, so I stood there in the corner in my mother’s
homemade finery, watching the others do the Cool
Jerk and the Bristol Stomp, though I never mastered
any of the moves. I don’t remember much about
those nights, except the longing, the wish that I could
just let go, feeling my head sway, hips and arms flow
with the rhythm of the band, playing “My Girl” and
“Wipe Out” too loudly and a bit offkey. Not long ago,
on Facebook, an old friend shared a photo from those
times. There I was on the top steps of the old JCC,
in my navy peacoat, bangs flung forward over one
eye, looking skeptical and slightly bored, already
on my way out of that crowd.

*

Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry and editor of three anthologies. She is a retired college educator and elected member of the Academy of American Poets. Her website is at http://www.RobbiNester.net

In the Beginning by Robbi Nester

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In the Beginning

When I was three, the street signs used to taunt
me with arcane symbols, not yet words. I knew
that if I studied them, they would open-sesame
the world I dreamed about, the one in books,
built out of these odd symbols. I filched a paper
from the corner store and stared at it for hours,
till the letters rose like flame from a struck
match. It was years before some kind adult
taught me the alphabet. Instead, my father
took the newspaper away and punished me
for stealing it. Later, every week, I’d borrow
ten books from the library. I couldn’t wait
to open them. But my mother thought
that children ought to play outside. I hid
out in the car like an assassin, sat silent
on the darkened cellar stairs, a stack
of books beside me, Prometheus, savoring
the danger, hoarding this stolen light.

*

Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry and editor of three anthologies. She is a retired college educator and elected member of the Academy of American Poets. Her website is at http://www.RobbiNester.net