How the Poem Labors
to fill black and rusted cauldrons
between witches cackling
on the Rorschach test,
to fill Greek urns,
of incense-breathing musk
between handles curving inward.
How the poem labors
to fill trenches of severed heads,
the abandoned helmet my sister wore;
to fill mental miles
on the long road rutted,
to linger in orchids forever bound,
to fill coupling
with the tiredness
of love and doubt.
How the poem labors
with button-shirted words;
wearing gauze bandages
to salve the wound that never heals.
Appears in Curbstone Review
How Long Do Others Speak if We Have Already Spoken?
Title after Neruda
Get beyond it, my newly-found cousin says,
while my fork and knife remain
in the air and I feel like the poached
salmon on the flowered plate,
the lemon bleeding citrus
through its skin. It’s hard to get
beyond having no grandparents,
aunts, uncles, not even a birthday card
while your mother cruises,
your father dies, and your sister
goes craaaaaazy. So I say,
“you’re absolutely right,”
before I lower my cutting tools.
Appears in In the Tunnel
Author’s bio: Lucille Gang Shulklapper has been a workshop leader for The Florida Center for the Book, and workshops facilitated through the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. She writes fiction and poetry and her work appears in numerous publications, as well as in four of her poetry chapbooks, What You Cannot Have, The Substance of Sunlight, Godd, It’s Not Hollywood, and In The Tunnel.
Tags: "How Long Do Others Speak if We Have Already Spoken? Title After Neruda" by Lucille Gang Shulklapper, "How the Poem Labors" by Lucille Gang Shulklapper, Lucille Gang Shulklapper
