June 2019
Bio Note: "Lives of the Dead" is elaborated and heightened from the feeling-tone of a brief snatch of dream I held onto as I woke up one long-past morning, and then briefly noted down. (The writing of the poem came quite a bit later.) It's one of the poems I've most enjoyed presenting when giving readings from my most recent book, Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017). My prior books include Shimmer (WordTech, 2012), and Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, 2nd edition (Antrim House, 2012)—winner of the 2007 Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize. I've just started sending around a new collection; please think good thoughts!
Lives of the Dead
Alive in my dream, and serene,
they sit in our old 40-watt-
dim Bronx kitchen on the lollipop red
dinette set leatherette chairs. On the table,
of all things, a game of Scrabble,
though neither dad nor mom could spell.
I’ve just come up from “downstairs,”
where someone brandishing an AK-47
stepped out of an armored pick-up
and grabbed the grocery money
in my fist, but let me run off,
someone out of a conflict somewhere—
Ukraine, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Gaza?
Living room newly redone in deep
forest-green and wine (hide-a-bed
gone), the only bedroom (no longer mine)
now in chenille, but all the rooms
still in the ’50s, and I’m visiting
from the 2010s. My father wants to know
if I’d like to play, though I’m frantic.
I yell “I must contact the authorities!”
Studying his tiles, he says to call
the operator, and points at the black
rotary phone without breaking
his gaze. With a satisfied nod
he puts down a triple-word score,
nudels, and my mother, poker-faced,
trumps him with 7-lettered brockly—
both of them comfortable and anarchic
in their little pocket of moored time.
Originally published in my most recent book of poems, Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017).
Alive in my dream, and serene,
they sit in our old 40-watt-
dim Bronx kitchen on the lollipop red
dinette set leatherette chairs. On the table,
of all things, a game of Scrabble,
though neither dad nor mom could spell.
I’ve just come up from “downstairs,”
where someone brandishing an AK-47
stepped out of an armored pick-up
and grabbed the grocery money
in my fist, but let me run off,
someone out of a conflict somewhere—
Ukraine, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Gaza?
Living room newly redone in deep
forest-green and wine (hide-a-bed
gone), the only bedroom (no longer mine)
now in chenille, but all the rooms
still in the ’50s, and I’m visiting
from the 2010s. My father wants to know
if I’d like to play, though I’m frantic.
I yell “I must contact the authorities!”
Studying his tiles, he says to call
the operator, and points at the black
rotary phone without breaking
his gaze. With a satisfied nod
he puts down a triple-word score,
nudels, and my mother, poker-faced,
trumps him with 7-lettered brockly—
both of them comfortable and anarchic
in their little pocket of moored time.
Originally published in my most recent book of poems, Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017).
© 2019 Judy Kronenfeld
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF