Tag: Sandra Rivers-Gill

Two Poems by Sandra Rivers-Gill

~ ONE ART ~ 5 Comments

Post Vogue

is what currently hangs unchanged
in a closet full of classics.

Something is trending outside.
Ready-to-wear whispers, Wear Me.

The cold shoulder wants to flatter itself—
expose skin pressed tight against
the heat of due season.

Styles are seen but loop like the news.
Reminds me I have nowhere to go—
nowhere to cut a rug.

I could go to Krogering—
wear my little black dress,
sing in Aisle 14 like a mic check.

This season of sensations
hems up the music in our voices.

Modern fashion fits into masks
gaping at the sides of its mouth.

* 

Twilight

        — An expired registration tag operates
        with daylight restrictions

This is no fictional film.
Daylight has yet to spring.
A brooding sky is a raised brow
trailing across suspicion.

It is nine-twenty-two p.m.—
not quite black-dark.

I warn myself while steering
miles from my home.
A crescendo of blues and reds
surround my unarmed car.

Reminds me of my namesake—
lassoed by a Lone Star.

I stop to gaze into the edge of night.
The long silence of my tears. I know
the ways a black body can
be broken into. Still—

grace gifts me a bad-tag citation, and
I make it home in the lore of ambient light.

*

Sandra Rivers-Gill is a teaching artist and an award-winning poet. Her poems have been published in journals and anthologies, with recent work in Sheila-Na-Gig online, Silver Birch Press, Spark: Celebrities, Representation and Decisive Moments, and Traitor Patriot: A Reflection of January 6th. She is the author of As We Cover Ourselves With Light (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023), a 2024 Eric Hoffer Book Award Category Finalist. www.sandrariversgill.com.

ONE ART’s 2024 Best of the Net nominations

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

ONE ART’s 2024 Best of the Net nominations

Sandra Rivers-Gill – D’Anjou
Carol Boston – Great Lady Descending
Brett Warren – Origami of Shock
Sara Backer – After Fourteen Years
Tom Gengler – The Clinic Squares
John Amen – The 80s

*

Congratulations to all our nominees!

*

More information about Best of the Net here.

D’Anjou by Sandra Rivers-Gill

~ ONE ART ~ 14 Comments

D’Anjou
— for George Floyd

I had forgotten its coolness I carry
from ice box to counter slab.

A pear’s taste is a hot commodity,
crisp and sweet.
Its body bares a certified label —
the inspector’s choice.

Its unbroken skin sits silent
on my countertop.

The greenish-gold of its silhouette
does not wobble or
collapse like a cracked egg.

Funny how present tense
can worm its way into a memory.

When I was a young girl,
the white woman next door grew pear trees —
littered the ground with their fruit.

I had forgotten.
By summer’s end she donned a straw hat,
climbed the ladder to her constellation of crops,
shared them with my brother and me.
The pears sat in our kitchen windowsill.
Our noses pressed against the scent
till they were ripe enough.

Now I stand at my kitchen counter
paring the skin from its flesh.

Its fresh tears stream in my hands.

I had forgotten pears ripen
at room temperature,
in their cultural climate.

I remember the instructions
that guarantee a pear’s ripeness:
simply press its neck.

*

A native of Toledo, Ohio, Sandra Rivers-Gill is a writer, performer, and playwright. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in journals and anthologies, including Of Rust and Glass, Common Threads, Poetry X Hunger, Death Never Dies, Kissing Dynamite, Mock Turtle, and Braided Way Magazine.