July 2024
Bio Note: Poetry seems so far away these days. I've been writing mostly fiction. Some stories have even been published in Impspired and Mad Swirl.
Author's Note: Flora Singer was depicted in Montgomery College (MD)’s Portraits of Life exhibit. This exhibit honored Holocaust survivors who lived in Montgomery County.
Author's Note: Flora Singer was depicted in Montgomery College (MD)’s Portraits of Life exhibit. This exhibit honored Holocaust survivors who lived in Montgomery County.
We Stand Before the Oracle
In memory of Flora Singer (1930-2009)
Above the white brick fireplace,
a collage of wire and shattered blue tiles
somehow forms a Star of David.
A woman, the oracle, is about to speak.
We wonder what she would say
to stop this world from burning.
We have read what the other survivors
have told us: to love one another,
teach our children, cherish family
since we’ve lost so many.
Yet here we stand
waiting for the woman
beneath a once-shattered star.
As if she were the oracle, about to speak.
Blacksmith in Nigeria
After a photograph by Sadiq Mustapha
In Lapai, city of book clubs,
a blacksmith stands barefoot
despite splinters and sharp stones
on the dirt floor. Brown toes
whiten with dust.
Humid air falls like a cloak
around the blacksmith’s shoulders.
He wears thrift store khakis
to ward off the open fire’s sparks.
He makes hoes and adzes,
sometimes guns. Houses and shops,
vines and trees with vast leaves
crowd along the paved road
to the capitol. Women and children
sell clothes Americans wore.
Originally published in Muddy River Poetry Review
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