Her Skin Rearranges the Light

 

Her Skin Rearranges the Light
 
What more could I wish
than to adore and be adored by
such as the one who calls me “baby”
as she breathes in my ear;
 
She who bathes in moon-rays
while her skin rearranges the light,
and she anoints me
with the holy oil of her reflection.
 
No more could I hope for
than her emeraldine gaze,
and to remain forever in her grace
is far more than I deserve.

What's New?

  New poetry chapbook book "Dreams and Other Magic" published by Alien Buddha Press is available now on Amazon!

Short story "A Romany Funeral" available at Half and One Magazine, joining "Remember Forgiveness" and "The Dry Years", which they published a few monts ago.

Coming in June, Rituals, a journal from Anomaly Poetry, will include two of my poems, "Fall Into Her Eyes" and "Crossing Generations"!

The beautiful journal Coneflower Cafe, availabe now from Choeofplirn Press (the publishers say, "Our name is pronounced chuf-plern and roughly means 'the chief place of rest,' but it is a word we coined by alternating the letters of our surnames") includes two of my poems, "Raymond Carver's Toaster" and "Dr. O'Little"!

2/11/24 - What a blast reading at Slightly Off-Beat Poets, in Thompson CT.

                                                                                    

1/23/24 - My poem "Too Late" has been published by Oddball Magazine!!

1/11/2024 - Video of me reading at Pour Me a Poem Open Mic in Mansfield, MA:            

Short stories "The Man Who Lives In 6C" and "In Yorktown, Her Name is Sharon" can be found at Esoterica Magazine!!

My poem "No Small Hole" has been accepted by Written Tales Magazine and is included in their latest "chapbook", available now: Written Tales Chapbook XI: Nostalgia

Also, I'm almost always at the Pour Me a Poem open mic event in Mansfield, second Thursday of every month (email me for location and details, or find Pour Me a Poem on Facebook); Poetry the Art of Words open mic in Plymouth, second Sunday of every month (except July and August); and Poetorium at Starlite, last Thursday of every month in Southbridge.

Click here to see my appearance on For The Love Of Words, from Easton Community Access Television, from 2/16/23.

Some photos from prior events:

The view from the podium at Poetry the Art of Words, located at Plymouth Center for the Arts.

Open Mic readings at Book Lovers Gourmet in Webster, MA.

The Poetorium at Starlite, Southbridge, MA

One Dream Is Not Enough

 Our first meeting was like a dream,
A perfect but impossible encounter
Beneath fluorescent lights
 
But one dream is not enough
For an entire lifetime, and so
I’ve dreamed of nothing else ever since
 
Asleep I dream of days spent together,
Of laughter and music and the smells
Of a welcoming kitchen
 
Awake I dream of sleeping in your arms
And the sweetness of your kiss
And hiding in your tangled hair
 
Before, my life was only cold reality,
But now it is a warm and loving dream
From which I know I’ll never wake.

Review: Story & Bone, by Deborah Leipziger, Lily Poetry Review Books

Story & Bone, by Deborah Leipziger, from Lily Poetry Review Books

 

In her newest collection of poems (Story & Bone, Lily Poetry Review Books, 2022), Deborah Leipziger explores all the ways in which she intersects with her world, and thus helps us all understand the ways in which we intersect with our own. She reveals herself as daughter, mother, lover, friend; as baker, gardener, poet; as Brazilian, American, Jew; but most of all as human.

            Skillfully reusing phrases and images from one poem to the next, so that one page seems to echo the ones before, Leipziger reminds us of the rhythms and patterns in every life. The most notable example of this is when she speaks of her family’s story of ancestors concealing valuables as they escaped from tyranny: in one poem, “gems into the hems”; in another “gems sewn in hems”; in a third: “gems faceted by stone hidden in garments”. She then calls the very story into question: “Or is it legend / I sing the fiction and non-fiction”. 

            Or again with multiple references to her own dangerous birth:  “I celebrate my survival / from the umbilical cord / wrapped around my neck”; and then, “the umbilical cord coiled around my neck”. She then multiplies the echo through the umbilical connection between herself and her twin daughters…and further by drawing the comparison between her own blue complexion at birth and the color of the walls in the room where she gives birth. Echoes upon echoes.

            There is an almost breathtaking sense of intimacy in this work, a fearless willingness to share herself with the reader, body and soul, as in:

 

            “I celebrate my nimbus of curls

            nipples   neck   navel”

 

            “I open myself and claim my

            openness

            I transform and sing

            my Evolution”

 

            “I enter with offerings –

            Pomegranates and honey dates,

            All that I will be is here.

            Entering.”

 

There is an earth-mother-like quality in the way she shows us a day of making lemonade with her daughters (Lemonade), or compares the act of picking apples in an orchard to that of motherhood itself (Apple Orchard), or when she provides the most spiritual and open-hearted recipe I’ve ever seen anywhere (How to Make a Challah).

            Every page seems to glimmer with its own light, but for me the most sublimely luminescent moment comes in How to Help a Friend Mourn, which opens “For this you will need lemons” and then explains: 

            “Maybe you won’t have time to grow a lemon tree

but you have planned for this moment,

this is why you’ve grown a lemon tree.”

  

As in her earlier work, there are many floral images here, and when she puts the phrase “A half truth / to say I painted flowers” into Georgia O’Keefe’s mouth it’s clear she’s speaking of her own poetry as well. Sometimes a calyx or a spadix are more than the parts of a flower.

All artists strive to make their audience feel something. Leipziger succeeds triumphantly. You will feel her warmth and her wisdom; her strength and her vulnerability; her love of life and her deep understanding of both its pain and its beauty. This is a truly lovely book.

A Tiger in Her Hips

Let me tell you man she’s got a tiger in her hips,

She’s got fire in her fingertips,

And I can’t wait to kiss her lips again.

She’s devoured by her desire to devour me,

As I her, every time I see

The sparkle in her sea green eyes.

And when we are united in the burning fire

Of our love, consumed by our desire,

We feel no fear as we soar ever higher, never

Dreaming of landing, ever clinging tightly

To each other and knowing, rightly,

That we’ll find each other nightly, evermore.

Another Poem About the Moon

Another poem about the moon
Another song about what you mean to me
I have so much I need to say
About the moon and you and me
 
You and the moon and me
Side by side by side
Just the way it pulls the sea
Creating the rising and falling tide
It pulls on you and it pulls on me
Until we’re side by side by side
 
Another verse about the stars
The ones that hang in the midnight sky
And the ones I see shining
There in your eyes
 
You and the stars are my guiding lights
Hanging in the sky or hanging from your ears
Keep me on my path, day and night
I see you both always, far or near
Shining with a pure silver light
And I feel no fear
 
Just another song of you
Or another part of the same sweet song
I’ve sung since our love was new
And still my heart beats strong
And still my heart stays true
And still I sing the same sweet song
Of me and the moon and you

Eternity must be jealous of the present

Eternity must be jealous of the present, 
its immediacy, its relevance.
Yes, eternity must be jealous 
when a lover smiles and sighs, 
when she removes the clip 
which had held back her hair, 
freeing it and allowing me 
to slip my hand between the strands 
as if it were a bolt of priceless silk 
which she offers to me 
as a queen might offer 
alms to a beggar.
My fingers luxuriate gratefully. 
This gratitude and luxury 
exist only in the present, 
and so, eternity is jealous.

Eternity is full of 
inconsequentialities 
and coincidences.
Full of happenstances 
and miscellaneous occurrences.
But only the present contains life.
Only the present contains love.
Only the present contains potentiality and value.
Only the present contains her sweet kiss.
And so, eternity is jealous.