Risa Denenberg

My new book, slight faith, is scheduled for release on May 1st, but today, by chance, I found that it’s already available online at Amazon and at Barnes and Noble. (By chance, you say? I was in fact looking for it.) This means that if someone orders it today, they could receive it before I receive my copies later next week. My publisher, Lana Ayers (MoonPath Press) released it early so that I could have it in hand for a reading on 5/5/18.

Somehow the timing has fallen into place and I will be reading on KPTZ on 5/4 and then reading with Susan Rich and Susan Landgraf on 5/5 at Anna Quinn’s Imprint Books in Port Townsend.

It all seems very sudden at this moment, but the truth is, slight faith has been a part of my life for the past 5 years, going through its paces, revision after revision, submitted and rejected, picking up some semi-finalist spots and one finalist before MoonPath accepted it for publication in August of 2016.  And then waiting and more revisions and more waiting, and finally choosing a cover and then the production back-and-forth and now, here we are.

You probably know that there are a wide range of feelings when a book leaves  the nest and flies out into the world. Fear, excitement, relief. Today, mostly I am grateful. To Lana who has been a perfect editor and who rejected it once, but encouraged me to submit it again. To early readers including my co-editors at Headmistress Press, Mary Meriam and Rita Mae Reese. To Mary, who tirelessly searched for the perfect art work for the cover. For the nice rejection from Copper Canyon Press. To editors who took the time to give me feedback (thinking here particularly of Kelli Agodon, to whom I’m grateful for so many things). And of course, to the amazing poets who wrote blurbs for it- Susan Rich, Michael Schmeltzer, and Laura Foley.

And especially, I am grateful for all the outrageously fabulous poetry out in the world today that has inspired me, and thrilled me, and kept me almost sane in this crazy world.

Abiding Winter 

How we made it through another winter’s
not the question. Nor is it an answer
since one of us was left behind in winter.

In Spring, in buoyancy, you asked a question.
Cups stood their ground between us, tea and coffee.
You wished to be the answer to your question.

Then winter comes again and yet another,
a darkling season full of melancholy. The yanking
of my soul back to the gutter, that other

place where questions have no answers,
and answers only placate. It takes rafters
of steadfast faith, or mettle, to seek answers.

Truth is brutal. So much we can’t recover,
years I’ve begged for you to wait for Spring to bloom
again, living in despair beside each other, and another

stormy season while we tussle for an answer
or a coda to the sum of all of life’s bother.
I’ve learned to hold my tongue, to question
nothing. Questions are another sort of winter.

Originally published at Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.

This will be my 10th year of participating in NaPoMo. I’m joining the group I’ve published daily poems with in April for the past few years. Like most participants, I doubt if I will write a new poem each of the next 30 days, but I will try my best. My plan has always been to do it first thing in the morning. If possible, I write a couple of poem-starts, to use as ‘leftovers’ for days when nothing is forthcoming, or I don’t have the 30 minutes to write.

I’m always excited about NaPoMo because some of my best poems have been started during this lovely parallel-play with other poets. It’s also a time to encourage and support others, a time to look for the best words or the most startling line in a draft, that line that later will be the edifice for a mature poem. It’s a time to flex the poetry-writing muscles, to do the reps.

Wishing everyone who takes on the challenge a fabulous ride!!

Before World

Now the earth was formless and void,
and darkness was over the surface of the deep.  —Genesis 1:2

Birds don’t sing.
Jazz don’t swing.
Bees don’t hive.
Men don’t jive.

Life swims before it flies.
Life crawls before it leaps.

Before houses, men don’t build prisons.
Before fences, coyotes don’t kill chickens.
And then earth is partitioned.

Trees teach birds to perch.
Birds teach frogs to jump.
Frogs teach girls to skip rope.
Girls teach words to sing.

Songs sing before sin.
Sins teach women to pray.
And then prayers teach hate.

Before prayer,
Women aren’t spoils of war.
Black men don’t swing from trees.
Landmines don’t amputate boys.
Kids don’t drown in the sea.

Alternate end line: Kids aren’t shot at their desks.

Originally published in Lavender Review.

“It’s Saturday.
I’m just trying
to reclaim my bearings
after
a week that divulged
how much
I need Saturday
to take my bearings back.”

All day yesterday I was feeling listless, unmoored. I’m in such a different head-space during my work week, and like everyone I know, I look terribly forward to my days ‘off’ so I can  be left alone to my own devices. But it’s not so easy; transitions rarely are.  You probably know the feeling, so much to do, not sure what to do, not comfortable relaxing with so many things that need doing, picking up book after book, starting task after task, but unable to connect and finish anything, spending too much time checking email and Facebook, nothing to show for the day. It’s almost the end of March, and I haven’t begun even thinking about the garden. I have enough leftovers in the fridge so there was no need to cook. Laundry, done. The sun was out for a couple of hours, but by the time I took a shower, the sky had clouded over. I never made it out of the house. Listless. Uncommitted. Tired. A wee bit hopeless. Perhaps it was just one of those days.

Of course, there was this: I knelt in awe of students who were out in the streets speaking truth to power, demanding an end to gun violence in their schools and communities. And I was heartbroken by it too. Wanting to be hopeful, yet wondering whether demonstrating against war in the sixties really made any difference in the long haul towards a more peaceful world.

Then, Sunday blooms with possibility. There will be breakfast, coffee with a friend, a walk, some writing.  Finding the effort, the will, the inner resources that allow me to find meaning, to move forward, to survive.  To be grateful.

To a woman I might have loved

I raised my hand to my forehead, scanning—
(I don’t know what for, was it fever or despair?)

hearing my father had died, unable
to reach his body before its burial

I brought my hand to my breast, thinking
heartburn or infarction and wept for him,

for others, for all my corpses

but that was years ago, and then I hear
that yesterday you raised your hand

to your forehead and buckled, rushed
by helicopter to Harborview never knowing

(was it stroke or lost hope?)

a scribbled message that fell into my lap
from a woman I’ve never met (your friend)

said, taken off life support, but the image—
the hand, the puzzled brow, the collapse

so vivid

and how did she know to call me, you and I
(can I say we?) had only just met, and did she know

you had written a poem, sent it to me, as if
seeking my advice about poetry, until

(another hand-to-head moment) I realized it was
you, flirting, but instead of dinner or shy embrace

you are dead. Last night I dreamed our first
kiss, our last kiss, as you darkly departed.

Published in Whirlwind @ Lesbos, Headmistress Press 2016

I missed blogging last Sunday, which was the day following the 3-day whirlwind of AWP. By Sunday I was sick with a cold and fever and exhaustion. That was also the day I drove from Tampa to Miami to visit my son and his family, before driving back to Tampa on Tuesday to catch a plane back to Seattle, to then to drive home to Sequim, and get up on Wednesday to go to work.  I get furious with people who come to work sick, but there I was, over-medicated and wearing a mask, seeing patients.  I like to boast that I never get colds, obviously untrue, even with seeing patients in clinic all day who come in with one bug or another. It is true that I rarely get sick, for which I am enormously grateful, but should stop boasting about.

My secret weapon against ordinary viruses is sleep. I get 8-9 hours of good sleep most night of the week. I also add cinnamon to my coffee and use echinacea tincture at the first sign of a cold. The cinnamon trick comes from a story I’ve heard that during the 1918 Flu epidemic, which killed members of my own family, the folks working at the cinnamon factory in NYC, suffered remarkably few flu deaths.

I am feeling better today.  Which brings me to AWP itself, almost forgotten in the tumult of travel and the misery of an ordinary cold. This was my third year attendin

g AWP for my press, Headmistress Press, where I sell our  Books and Lesbian Poet Trading Cards and put temporary tattoos that read “Lesbian Poet” onto body parts of strangers who stop by.  I always miss all the good stuff, but I was able to attend a couple of off-site events in the evenings and hear poetry read by some of my favorite poets.

Feeling so run down by travel (this was my third trip in three months) it would be tempting to say I won’t go to AWP next year. But it’s in Portland in 2019. Nothing will keep me from being there and catching the Pacific NW vibe at AWP. See yous guys there next year, I hope!

Consolation

Imagine the crawl from sight to sightlessness.
Even in dreams you wear bifocals.

Imagine not knowing your grandson’s name, or being
lost in a word-salad thicket of sinister trees.

Imagine lying on your death bed, palms cupped
in a mudra of surrender. And among dementia,

going blind, and dying, you pray death will come first.
This is how you curl into your solace, bidding its shell

to your mollusk, storm of sea blowing in your ear,
inexpressible pain expressed sotto voce.

From slight faith, forthcoming in May from Moonpath Press.

I just did a second round of corrections for slight faith, which will be published on May 1st.  I’m looking through these poems, and somehow, I can’t believe I wrote them, or maybe I just don’t remember the actual writing of them. Some of the poems are a decade old, and I worked on this manuscript for at least 4 years before finding a home for it with Lana Ayers at MoonPath Press.

This is no complaint, far from it. The manuscript is so much better now than it was four years ago! Lana accepted it in the summer of 2016, asking if I was willing to wait that long for publication. I immediately said “yes”, loving her press so much, and wanting more than anything to have a book published by a Pacific Northwest publisher. And, of course, I continued to edit and fiddle with the poems until this past December.

The feeling of not believing I wrote these poems uncovers layers of emotions  that are erupting now that I am watching the work transition from manuscript to actual book: a lack of faith in myself; tremendous gratitude to every poet on earth, to whom I owe my love of poetry;  astonishment  that the poems are good; questioning “are they good?”; the anxiety of knowing the next phase (promoting the book) is likely to lead to some mixture of joy and disappointment; and wonderment at the poetic collective witchery that was tapped into in the writing.

It’s been a long gestation. The book is really beautiful and the cover is awesome (thanks to Mary Meriam for tirelessly  searching for the right art work). I’m quietly excited as all hell.

But I’d be seriously giddy for you to pre-order slight faith. 

Twenty Years of Dead

—for Jon (1956-1993)

There’s not a lot of love that isn’t brutal, but we

had our East Village dives that didn’t open for Sunday
liquid-brunch until 1 pm and Monday nights at the G&L
Community Center where all the boys were cruising and
you hung out with me anyway, and

your pâté, your miraculous leg of lamb, your
hundred layers of filo, and

your ten plagues, the infusions that didn’t kill
the germ that killed you, and how

after I met your parents, and
after I found the shoebox of postcards of martyred Saints
and slush pile of short stories you wrote in college,
I read your journals.

I should never have read your journals.

Your love was hilarious
and full of grand gestures and
caution tossed, and

Christ how we could talk smart and fast like 2 Jews do,
I could meet up with you after an AA meeting, count
on you to say good god girl, you need a drink, because

you knew you were going to die and you could say
things so brainsick as after I die, I want you to burn
my body in the street and eat my flesh.

Originally published at Spry Literary Journal