Poems from Rosalind Brenner

31 May

downpour, june 2009

not rain
shards of mirror
fall from the sky fall
through earth

a failure of belief
sun’s betrayal a storm beyond
reason tells me

let go this goose-
step march legs high

and strong but headed wrong
box the thing to the ground

turn around live
Live

not rain this is
forgetting pieces

of glass cutting
the pool blue symmetry

drops nettling
the surface
not rain this is

bodies falling
plane exploding their horror
to fall out of the sky

to watch their children
break—
nightmare rain enters me
if I allow can’t stop its
stealth approach
the following sonic boom—sit
here in rain
torrents beat the courtyard
panic and grace crack me open
thunder—
the unremitting sound of this

fractures
I am not me
I am outpour this rain

Returning to 757 Empire Blvd

A gloom smears the yellow brick of the old
apartment building. I search
for the slat of cracked light that shone on father
when he scooped me into his left arm, right
laden with a bag of Charlotte Russe:
round little cakes wrapped in cardboard cups,
to smudge my face
with whipped cream and sugar,
for his fleeting smile.

The Artist

He was about to show
at MoMA, but they changed their minds
and said, You aren’t the one;
it was the other one of you
that made a difference,
the one that painted red and purple triangles.

But he had moved on to small interdicted circles
unlocked with keys that opened
all the sticky figs he had eschewed
inside his fragrant brushes,
not what once he made,
but new blue circles.

Cut down by caprice, he mourned his almost
fame, pierced his paintings,
brushed ashes into the slashed canvas.

Some sonofabitch from Georgia
painted a sequence that twitched between rectangles
and toilet paper rolls. “A tour de force,” the critics said.
MoMA gave him three big rooms.

The artist in his hole dug further.
Now then, he thought, I’ll hang myself
from a gargoyle at the church’s eaves
around the corner from the museum.
And did. And had

his show, performance art,
hanging with the best of them.

“Downpour ” first appeared in The Cortland Review; “The Artist” is in the Southampton Review

Bio:

Rosalind Brenner holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems appear in The Cortland Review, Poetrybay, The Southampton Review, Long Island Sounds, Walt’s Corner in The Long Islander, Taproot Journal, PPA Journal, and many local publications. She has performed her work for audiences at a variety of readings, including many years in Poetry Repertory Theater. She has won Honorable Mention in a Gertrude Stein “look-alike” contest, second prize in 2007 in The North Sea Poetry Scene contest and second prize in Farmingdale’s Long Island poetry contest. In 2008, she won Honorable Mention prizes in the New Millennium national contest, one for essay, one for poetry. Brenner is currently working on her first full-length book of poems.

Brenner is a visual artist in the mediums of stained glass, painting and collage. In March she and her partner opened a Bed and Breakfast in their home, which provides lots of inspiration for new art and poems.