Here are our bees

Here are our bees

    she thinks, protective of both the baby and the bees.

What is the correct pronoun

What is the correct pronoun
   
     for her, for me, for the self. These days, she is more aware of the self within her actions.     
    The woman. The girl. The mother. Me.

She narrates her own actions

She narrates her own actions

    as she does them, calling herself Mommy before her son. This becomes her new habit,    
    casting out a net of language into the future to protect her baby, to encourage the world’s    
    softness and obedience. This is the part of hide and seek where the seeker calls out to the
    hider, Ready or not, here we come.

Motherhood introduces her to this new guilt

Motherhood introduces her to this new guilt

    because of all that she cannot do. You are only one body, the body insists, but the brain
    and the heart holler out YOU COULD BE DOING SO MUCH MORE.

One red tulip

One red tulip
   
    at the ankles of the mailbox. Craning its little, lithe neck.

Two Poems and a Collage by Leah Umansky

image by Leah Umansky

THIS IS A REAL ELEGY
Leah Umansky

how did we make that leap
to borrow a moon and make it our own
the heart is exhausted.
and the other-telling is now fire-backed and brim
don’t know where else we can go.

the not-earth is a tender song
(and who will read this anyway)

You, in your station, what notes are you trying to sound?
Me.  My wolf. We hear you.

There is no substitute.  There won’t be anyone to save us.

Sense has ceased.

But, I tell you, we are full of wonder,
literally full of wonder:  wonderful.
And there is wonder inside each of us darkly-pitted things.

I’m trying to get you to look at this life.  At this page. This screen.
This is not a proxy war

It has been so long since a war has been just men fighting.
To live here, in this moment.

Let the training begin:
    
             First, fight.
             Second, love.
             Third, love harder

We can season this together
things in the wild need salt
Come, let me salt the wounds at your heels




WHAT WILL I DO WITH ALL THESE WOLVES?
Leah Umansky

I am wonder-led by wolves.
This night-world is our lyric, our pack-song.
We comb these paths for beauty, but I cannot chart the countless devouring of tooth and nail

My wolves are wanderers. I, their huntress.

one stores costumes
one thinks he predominates
one lives a life of wind and waves
one thinks darkness is key
one thinks all is retro
one never leaves me
one tangles light and shadow
one folds fable into dreams
one bites anything that moves
one bites anything indulgent
one suggests ferociousness
one imagines dreaming
one absorbs the hurt of the past
one stories for me
one is mine (all mine)
one thinks he knows a way to better days
one keeps remnants in a hole in a cave

together, we rise our way through darkened rambles and haunted freeze-frames
together, we torch what nips at our ankles, pulls at our hair and sneers through barricades
together, we anchor each day into a new day, a new existence, a new tomorrow

The above poems are published in Straight Away the Emptied World,

and appear here with permission of the author

Read Leah's thoughts On Creativity here

***
Leah Umansky is the author of the dystopian themed chapbook, Straight Away the Emptied World (Kattywompus Press 2016)¸ the Mad-Men inspired, Don Dreams and I Dream (Kattywompus Press 2014) and the full-length collection Domestic Uncertainties (Blazevox 2012). Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming in, such places as Poetry Magazine, Magma, Faerie Magazine, Thrush Poetry Journal, The Golden Shovel Anthology, and Barrow Street.

Dear sweet boy I want to give you grass

Dear sweet boy I want to give you grass

    so I bring the window down into the car door, so I bring you out into the green world.
    Together we will inhale the carroty perfume of growing, of tending, of cutting.

Already with you there are good old days

Already with you there are good old days

    And there is now. Back when you slept on my shoulder. Back when you were a quieter,
    more fragile version of yourself.

The faucet. The pipes in the shower. The window

The faucet. The pipes in the shower. The window
   
    yawning open. The furnace gulping as it wakes up. The awake birds and the sleeping    
    ones. The whining brakes of the garbage truck. These are things she mistakes for her baby
    crying.

Beauty clutches in its teeth

Beauty clutches in its teeth

    that thing which is its opposite. Another way of saying this is that whatever can be ruined    
    is beautiful.