MIRIAM N. KOTZIN

I teach literature and creative writing in the at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA where I am the advisor to Maya, the student literary magazine. I have been appointed Director of--and have developed--a program leading to a Certificate in Writing and Publishing, which is now going through the approval process of the university committees. My poetry has been published in a number of print magazines, among them: The Iron Horse Literary Review, The Painted Bride Quarterly, Boulevard (for which I am a contributing editor), The Mid-American Review, The Southern Humanities Review, Pulpsmith, and Confrontation. Online my poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Small Spiral Notebook, Drexel Online Journal, the Vocabula Review, Three Candles, the Poetry SuperHighway, ForPoetry.com. Word Riot, The Front Street Review and Blaze. My short fiction has appeared in ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum (print) and Littoral (online) and will appear in the online launch of Xaxx.

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REPOSE

The little white blossoms
whose names I do not know
are in flower. The branches
bend with the weight
of their whiteness.
I'd learn their name
to say as I pass what is in bloom
as today I say iris, rose,
rhododendron, peony, lilac,
holding them by their names
though I cannot stay the season.

A woman hanging clothes turns,
lifts her hands to the line,
bends to the basket,
lifts to the line, bends
like a weighted branch.
I watch with your eyes
aspects of gesture captured.

In me you found less gesture
than a certain stillness,
an arrangement of hair,
the curve of my arm above my head.

As you held me I will hold
you in these words
while the tall iris withers,
and the rose, rhododendron, peony, lilac
and all the little nameless blossoms.

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HONEYMOON

The maples sweeten with the season;
the crepuscular landscape is harmless.
Through drawn curtains I glimpse
hidden interiors, dimly lit.
I wonder whose lives, in passing
I've flattened into a set.
This is the time to learn
how to trust in darkness.

Unseasonably you mention peach blossoms
"White in the wind." We are far
from peach orchards. All country
is the same to you. Peach blossoms
are not white. They are pink.
To you orchards of blossoms
are nothing but poetry.
I've studied blossoms,
feared late hard frosts,
waited to climb for the highest fruit,
known sun, the crick in the neck picking,
known the weight of fruit.
"Petals like snow."
I say nothing. Instead

I lean towards you
as I lean into the wind,
drawn off balance,
seeking new equilibrium.

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LANDSCAPE

Hills are not exactly anything
after the melt, snow patched like
mange on backs of slow
beasts. Now, gray and brown,
in changing light the hills shift
their weight.

In softened air
we watch the line of distant
trees for blush. Like tourists
off the Gloucester coast,
scanning for the tell-tale
spout that hangs, shimmers,
fades, we wait to call
the sighting; the huge back
breaks the surface, rises,
and in a splendid curve
descends; or perhaps the fluke
stands, held, as in a crude
woodcut in a book of yarns
we can take from the shelf,
and after a puff of dust
is blown from the top edge,
open whenever we choose.

From stubble and matted grasses
a few tufts rise; hopeful plumes
move in light wind.

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WISTERIA

1.

I am a rainwoman mourning
in a world of water
where I am lost.

The windows‹are glazed with water.
The lawn slopes away from the house
down to the stream where willows grow.
Yesterday after the storm
you went down at dusk
to gather willow branches
torn from the trees by the wind.
You came to me,
your arms filled
with dripping lashes.

The windows are glazed with water.
We are unable to translate
the wisteria heavy with rain.
We will not go walking
through fields of high wet grasses
to return home drenched.
You recede like an indifferent figure
seen from a train.

This morning I am a rain woman
in a house of water
where I am lost
to a receding indifferent figure.

2.

I am a rainwoman dancing
among the willows
on the banks of the stream.

Bending, swaying
my body brushes
the streaming branches.
My dance trails
a wake of motion.

The land falls away from the house
as I have fallen slowly away from you.

The drooping wisteria
no longer pose their riddle.
I have unlocked their mystery
with my dance.

In the watery light of morning
the willows tremble
with their memories of a rainwoman
dancing,
body swaying on banks
of a boundary stream.

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SPRING

I watched the full-bloomed magnolia's
pink and white spill
into a pool on the lawn
until one day I woke
to see you stand
under the tree
slightly stooped
your back turned to the house
and with swift movements rake.

At last the wisteria
is blossoming uncontrollably.
Someday I will follow the stream
away into the woods
to where the water widens
to a seeming stillness.
There watercress grows wild
in the cool, slow current.

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DAYLILY HOUSE

The house is surrounded
by lilies we fry for supper.
We eat the body of summer.

The mist rises.
Over the hayfield
the mountains reappear.

The light in the woods
is green as water.
We wade through ferns.

The bushes are heavy
with berries. Our fingers
stain red with the picking.

Beaks deep in delphinium,
hummingbirds slake
a ruby-throated thirst.

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ELEGY FOR A WOMAN

My husband always bent
to kiss her first.
I watched her
lift her hand
to brush his face
with her fingers.
At the base of her nails
were small pink moons.

Her body was filled
with broken promises.

She held herself apart,
hating to be kept close,
but for a long time
she, her lover, my husband
and I were anchored
together.

I watched her
face grow pale.
Her hair fell forward,
obscuring her features.
Slowly she turned
away from me.

All my life
I have wanted to be
someone else.

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YARDWORK

"Two paradises were in one to live in paradise alone."
-Marvell

To the forsythia¹s golden abandon
he made an end. Leaning breathless,
swift-sheared, he pruned against the season.
The branches tumbled, a pyre at his feet.
She¹d loved the wild forsythia,
had coaxed blooms,
had filled the house
with crystal vases of sunlight.
Now the bush took shape, tamed.

Back and forth he pushed the mower,
squaring the lawn: hated the fallen
magnolia petals pale as she was, ever
winter pale. He cut through hillocks
of violets. Each spring she¹d begged
him not to mow, leaving ink bottles
and spice jars of violets here and there,
purple and unexpected as a bruise.
He marched, determined to annihilate
or at least evade these
memories of all she¹d made.