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a journal of literature & art

The Literary Review

Issue 10         Page 106

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

© SusanWeiman: Chandelier with Reflection
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