Five Poems
Solstice
The sky, grey and insistent as February
often is in January when the ground is
finally frozen. No slipping in a last
minute bulb, burying a root, soil held
together by ice arching up from
underneath and mounding as the cold
takes hold as irregularly as moles
burrowing, the earth having committed
once more to the usual tilt for the
predictable time it takes to reach seven
degrees of axial lean and return again.
—
Then I Knew
Then I knew that unless I were forced to
constantly beg for my life, I would not
behave, would assume, condescend, report,
or diminish, no sainthood without great
suffering, no promise of decency
among persons unless by decree. I
was grateful for losing the sight that would
not let me see. Just give me that moment
when they said I was not going blind so
I might remember how nice I’d been,
thinking I would have to depend on others.
—
Quantum Healer
One wonders if she knew the treatments she
gave were worthless, yet still she encouraged,
hinting perhaps they made a difference,
tilting the scales toward a favorable
outcome. So many came that her husband
poured a driveway for them, parallel but
separate, a little walk connecting
the two, accented by azaleas. A
geodesic, honey-combed paradise
plopped down among rectangular trailer
homes and miners’ pyramidal roofs. An
office in the basement where, assisted
by a computer, she recorded one’s
voice to diagnose illness, each muscle
a vibration she captured in her Sound
Program, all elements reduced to wave
instead of particle. If she were a
Tarot card, she’d be the Magician, has
learned enough to treat the vulnerable
with slight-of-hand: measuring the level
of B 12 in your body after three
drops of a tincture; revealing footprints
of shameful molecules not ingested
since college; sharing the research which proves
human chant accelerates bone healing.
At the end, handing you a disk printed
with a ‘tone,’ she instructs: “Listen to this
three times a day and come back in two weeks.”
Over fifteen years only one of them
died, but past hope when he found her, by then
measuring that last year by his progress
in completing his twelve-month supply of
homeopathic Energy Enhance,
a trademarked regimen reported to
stimulate each organ in the body.
—
Communiqué #1
We were at the center point,
but something in us threw off
the balance until we developed
long rotations. Heading toward
apogee, we feared we might
not reach perigee again. Little
did we know we merely mimic
the earth, the illusion of a
circular orbit long past, though
everyone else on our plane of
reference perpetually tries to
maintain a tight centrifugal
whip and believes it natural.
—
Postscript to the Book of the Dead
What does it take to cope with adversity?
Destiny’s a bitch you can’t control.
Though we love her when she cradles us, in
the end we all get tossed aside even those
considered ‘of the few,’ betrayed in ways
unimaginable until we are what might as
well be lost in the bardo, having failed to
negotiate this demon or that passage
because of the same trick that has always
tripped us. How better to slip back into a
life rather than sprawl or flail, all in the re-
entry, the only part you can prepare for.
~
Sandra Kolankiewicz’s poems and stories have recently appeared in, or been accepted by, Prick of the Spindle, Bluestem, Bartleby Snopes, Gargoyle, Per Contra, Solo Novo, Bellingham Review, Rhino, New Plains, Monkeybicycle, Cortland Review, 2River, Anomalous, Inertia, and SNReview. Turning Inside won the Fall Black River Prize at Black Lawrence. Blue Eyes Don’t Cry won the Hackney Award for the Novel.