The Literary Review
ODE TO THE LADY BUG
O, orange dome with black polka dots—
you’re the one insect I won’t squash.
The wings you unpack from your shell and unfurl
like sails are feats of engineering.
You’re hungry for aphids, beetle eggs,
mealy bugs—not me.
And because you devour enemies of crops
and roses, you’re linked to Virgin Mary.
Your mate holds you for hours when
you make love. No wonder some think
just seeing you is an omen
of love and babies.
- Jacqueline Coleman-Fried
REPLACING MY WINTER COMFORTER
WITH MY
SUMMER COMFORTER
Winter’s dust.
Spilled skin lotion.
Scent of sweat. Flat.
Time to haul this overbearing
quilt that hid me from winter
to the laundromat,
and dress the bed with an airy
coverlet of flowers.
I float under it until
the first leaves drop, when,
shivering,
I lunge for what I stuffed
in the closet in spring—
an old lover with warm arms.
- Jacqueline Coleman-Fried
LOVELY
A perfect afternoon in June:
the sun butter-yellow and soft,
the irises tall and flamboyantly purple.
I am lying by a pool
in a garden,
the breeze sighing
on my bare flesh.
Two girls are playing in the water quietly
like nymphs in a pond
their long, wet hair
falling down their backs.
They are not my girls.
I have none.
But for a few moments
in the pool beside them,
admiring one’s mermaid tail, the other’s diving,
I pretend they are mine.
The world is as alive as it gets—
lovely, lovely, lovely.
- Jacqueline Coleman-Fried
AUTUMN RECKONING
(after Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare)
Cool air spiced with drying, dying leaves
reminds me of my husband
and a sonnet written by Shakespeare
to his love, likening his dropping hair
to autumn trees and death. A real bear,
my husband has gone to his den, shoulders hunched.
When we met, we fit—
I blotted out the rest.
Illness, that cruel hunter, shot to maim.
He’s like the jeans I pull on every morning—
worn but comfy watching TV together
or walking, alone, on a misty afternoon.
I will cherish each embrace and kiss
which may leave ere long, as Shakespeare wrote.
- Jacqueline Coleman-Fried
THE STORY OF SOUR CHERRIES
The only cherries that bake well are sour.
Sweet ones go limp and dull in the oven.
His favorite dessert in Brooklyn in the ‘50s—
served by his mother, especially on his birthday—
was cherry pie from a bakery called Ebinger’s.
His childhood was sweet, but cramped.
When he could, he left Brooklyn,
struck out for the Great Plains.
Wisconsin called.
From its soil, he plucked a bride.
And there, they planted a garden,
bore children. Did he know
from the start the state grows
sour cherries?
Did his heart feel it?
Now, his wife bakes cherry pies from local fruit.
Ebinger’s closed
when its customers moved away.
- Jacqueline Coleman-Fried
