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Featuring the works of Frances Turney
by Frances Turney
How did that old poem go?
o yeah ..
ma in her kerchief. That’s me.
pa in his cap you.
It was so prosaic
yet right of course
spilling like it did
from a bucket
full of oughts.
Then the children grew up left.
We found no joy in pretense.
All need for acting went away.
Your stocking cap, like love,
mummified as memory. I…
I have the kerchief yet.
by Frances Turney
On yet another TV documentary
I watch a New York man
climb a wooden ladder
to an old Polish hayloft.
He recounts hiding there when war
martyred his cousins of the star.
While he talks, his fingers
full-fleshed now and clean,
roll wheat from a discarded stalk.
One grey grain tumbles to his palm.
He lifts this to his teeth.
“If you chew slowly,” he recalls,
“it seems like bread.
It seems like bread and you will live.”
In quietness of afternoon
I sweep my kitchen floor
brush up a bit of walnut flesh
reach down with hunger
lift it to my mouth.
Chewing slowly, I
merge with his memory
merge with my brother’s memory
and live.
by Frances Turney
The grebes are eating caviar.
First yellow leaves of birch
scallop now the water’s edge.
Blurred shapes of orange salmon
circling, circling, silent
swim through clean cold rocky shallows.
Southbound flights of swans
cry across the moping sky
escaping winter. Too soon
I gather rose hips, urge
adolescent apples, bank the fire,
cache my summer passions.
Too soon.
by Frances Turney
Great silent fruit
You brewed
In your cauldron of cells
Skin that stole both
Brown of earth
Gold of sun.
Hoo, hoo, hee, hee!
I, too, know alchemy.
From your web of seeds
I’ll pull babes
Into my oven.
Their salty bones
Whet my appetite.
Your flesh stirred
With embryos and herbs
Shall become a pie:
Return earth’s brown.
Finally, I’ll mock you,
Carve holes here
To shape a fearsome face
Light a candle
In your heart
Bring sunlight back
To my dark window.
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