Sample Poems by Elizabeth Kirschner
A Parallel Universe
—for Dylan
Exists in our antique mirror where there are
somber gray hills and rosy swirls in the valleys.
“Dawn’s eyes,” says our dreamy child,
to which you sternly—but why?—reply,
“Blood-shine.” Our son already knows
about the singing bridges between stars,
the striptease of white roses letting petals
fall like manna upon his tongue: succor,
happiness happens somewhere else. But
where? Between two cusps of facing
crescent moons, a celestial marriage
meant to mirror our marriage here
on earth as we lie in a snowy bed,
our milk-fed child kneeling in between
us, knowing who christens whom upon
this ravaged earth.
The Sky of Many Acres
Let’s lie down
in a bed of wild thyme.
Its scent is of incense
inside ancient temples
where monks sit like statues
carved from ivory jade.
Summer ebbs, a stalled wish
inside love’s mirage.
Beneath the Sky of Many Acres,
the sun wants to touch our hearts
with its tender fingers, so let’s not
button all the way up.
We need to bare ourselves a little
if we want to be loved. That’s why I
let you touch my shadow, black
as the ink in the Book of the Dead.
Someday I’ll be the final period
on the last page, but for now
I let the sky be kind to me
and tie a sunray to my finger
like a wedding band and vow
to be open to blessings
which befall me, blue blessings
full of breezes and keys
with which to unlock the lock
that locks me in until
everyone can hear
the music musing through me
like a road that leads to home.
Secretions of Stars
Spatter of blowsy clouds in a sky
I don’t own. What then? Nearly
nothing except the apprehension
of beauty—think fireflies whose tails
say yes, yes, yes, amid whorls
of darkness, think secretions of stars
and blurry love distilled.
Give me you and I’ll give back. At least
for a minute embroidered with the royal lace
of thigh-high ferns. And beyond? A walk-
less way and the broken fetal bones
that heal inside our hearts.
My love, whoever you are, you’re still
emerging like the giant light that
crowns sunflowers on curvaceous stalks—
we, too, could humbly bow to a world
full of leafy, inward opening doors
while some inglorious god blesses the wounds
we’ve sadly given each other
until each aches its way into
an erotic and timeless blossom.
Sometimes the Sublime
It’s all half eclipse anyway.
Favor the light. Favor the dark.
Mix them. Taste them as you would a berry
you keep in your mouth, rolling it gently
with your tongue for a long time.
Sometimes the sublime presses into us
lending us a wing, just one wing:
the thought of flight keeps us aloft.
The highest music rolls in under the tongue
of the wave, in the shadows we drink from,
beneath the keening cry.
Think no further than that. The grassy hill
is enough, so are the tattered pelts of moss
and the sun sinking into the vespers of evening.
We’ve been there. We’ll go there again.
Into luxury, into becoming one and the sad tale
that has a glow as it says: be unlike, be unfinished,
be the relishing, be forever begun.
The tall tale tells a small truth.