October 2018
I'm a retired teacher of creative writing and literature, still very much involved with my poetry and nonfiction practices. I live with my husband, and two recently rescued poodle mixes, in Riverside, CA, all the way across the continent from my childhood home in NYC, and from our daughter and her family, who have settled in Maryland, as well as our son and his family, recently returned to their home in Maryland for a year, after his three-year Foreign Service tour in Cambodia. My most recent books of poetry are Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017), Shimmer (WordTech, 2012), and Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, 2nd edition (Antrim House, 2012)—winner of the 2007 Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize.
NOTE: Here are a couple of marriage poems from quite a ways back, as well as a little childhood reminiscence.
Long Marriage
You say you've read me through,
you've got my number,
and I want to slip past your grasp,
proliferating, to descend the stairs,
I want to mail myself like a chain letter,
over and over again to be suddenly known,
because everyone suddenly known is beautiful—
But maybe I'm only waiting
for someone, even you, to stand again
at an exact distance—
as when you first step back from a canvas
drizzling with light,
and the blurred lilies tremble into focus.
First published in Electrum 38 (Spring, 1986).
When You Listen To Me
my whole mouth fills with words, each
succulent, each smooth
as a pearl, glistening with saliva,
my clustered secrets glitter
like stones under water
you dive for them over and over
you lift them from my tongue
you carry them so tenderly
in the pouches of your hands
you string them on thinnest threads
and weave them into strands
and lower yourself for deeper and deeper words
and come up
on that slippery, swaying rope
First published in Manhattan Poetry Review, Summer, 1993.
A-Tisket, A-Tasket
Oh, when the weeks spun
like a glassy
ornament, this way and
that way, and this way
and that way, and I swung
back to yellow Wednesday
and went flying
whee to Saturday
breakfast brought to bed
scrambled eggs and
red onions
Big John and Sparkie
on the radio Saturday
to green Saturday world
without end
First published in The Montserrat Review 5, 2001.
Long Marriage
You say you've read me through,
you've got my number,
and I want to slip past your grasp,
proliferating, to descend the stairs,
I want to mail myself like a chain letter,
over and over again to be suddenly known,
because everyone suddenly known is beautiful—
But maybe I'm only waiting
for someone, even you, to stand again
at an exact distance—
as when you first step back from a canvas
drizzling with light,
and the blurred lilies tremble into focus.
First published in Electrum 38 (Spring, 1986).
When You Listen To Me
my whole mouth fills with words, each
succulent, each smooth
as a pearl, glistening with saliva,
my clustered secrets glitter
like stones under water
you dive for them over and over
you lift them from my tongue
you carry them so tenderly
in the pouches of your hands
you string them on thinnest threads
and weave them into strands
and lower yourself for deeper and deeper words
and come up
on that slippery, swaying rope
First published in Manhattan Poetry Review, Summer, 1993.
A-Tisket, A-Tasket
Oh, when the weeks spun
like a glassy
ornament, this way and
that way, and this way
and that way, and I swung
back to yellow Wednesday
and went flying
whee to Saturday
breakfast brought to bed
scrambled eggs and
red onions
Big John and Sparkie
on the radio Saturday
to green Saturday world
without end
First published in The Montserrat Review 5, 2001.
© 2018 Judy Kronenfeld
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