June 2021
Bio Note: Like most of us fortunate enough to be able to, I've been sheltering at home through this long pandemic, happy, in a way, for the opportunity to focus steadily on writing, but more than a little stir-crazy. My fifth book of poems, Groaning and Singing, will be published by FutureCycle in early 2022. I have a poetry chapbook and a memoir in essays circulating, but am too superstitious to name them here. My poems have recently appeared in Offcourse and Muddy River Poetry Review, among other journals.
Music for One
(Andante, Piano Concerto #21 in C, Mozart)
enters
the room
in chords
as deep as eyes.
The piano, coruscating
like fountain jets,
answers from inside
my chest which lifts
and lifts
and falls
and falls and lifts.
My breaths are oars
sluiced in liquid pearl.
Now, again,
the whole orchestra—
full wordlessness
overflowing
from one hollow
into another
pouring from river
mouths in glassy
cascades
sheeting down sheer
drops.
Originally published in Innisfree Poetry Journal 13 (Fall, 2011)
Brief Drift
A long walk to campus on a scorched,
quiet Sunday for a book I don’t clearly
need. Not a soul on the street.
A collarless stray retraces
his steps for me, skids off again, slantwise
for a pungent plant, neck stretched
for a low-flying bird.
Near the library lawn, a few people
benched under trees—anchored
as boats—neither sowing
nor reaping. And suddenly my bones recall
dedicated freedom: being eight or nine
and urged outside for hours after school
to guiltlessly loop and glide on my skates...
Easy right now to sit
on a bench—small talk nibbling
my line like a fish
I'll throw back, the carillon's quarter-hours
splashing my ears—
then, half-asleep, to watch the shadows
lengthen on the green,
the pages of the book open on my lap
riffled by the hot wind.
Originally published in Southern Florida Poetry Journal 11 (November, 2018)
©2021 Judy Kronenfeld
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