Miracles Previously Unnoticed
I longed for poetry and doom-scrolled
until headlines separated from the screen and breathed
in sighs, like teenagers,
we sent each other music audio files
and slowly began to speak the language of birds—
everything defied being put into words
I snapped
photos of miracles previously unnoticed:
Spring flowers, tiny sidewalk gems,
bits of accidental murals
we touched with our eyes, mouths masked,
silently admitting what we’ve always felt in our hearts—
living itself is a calculated risk
Reflection
You are only a paragraph in need of translation. (Even you don’t understand yourself fully.) Wondering now, if it’s you that needs editing, or if a new interpreter must be found. What is a text without a reader? The eye of the beholder – the cypher of the mind? Who can appreciate all your references if their tongues haven’t tasted kasha or Pushkin? All the living and buried alphabets of the world cannot remedy being taken out of context. If placed in a different order, your words would make different sense. If God spoke you, you would become a symphony of breath. This is the only explanation I can give you, this feeling of ‘not enough,’ this whisper of something
more.
Stilettos Over Grass Plots
I don’t need a closet full of Gucci,
There are only so many Russian funerals I’m required to attend
It is not disrespect or impracticality –
That full-breasted, open-lipped Eulogy in brand-name sunglasses?
Carried groceries ‘cross snow-laid banks to feed
Her ailing parents, tore open every artery
To sharpen the blade of beauty
Migrating birds have their own kind of camouflage
My people wear stilettos over grass plots
Outline tragedy with leopard print and lipstick
Lift up tombstones to label-check, if
They are good enough to belong here
It seems unnecessary, I know, especially
Since we recognize our flock
Not by attire, but something more sinister than Genuine
Leather, something behind the eyes asking
Females of the species, what’s the use
Of being a weapon and not knowing
How to wield yourself
Tea Smells Like Absolution
A cup too hot to drink— boiling amber rich
and heavy as a Tzarina’s dowry
Mine are a pale people who sing
“Ochi Chernie” (Sable Eyes), drink black tea, greet the New Year at midnight, spin
tales of deep, dark forests, deathless
wizards and endless
cold
Warm yourself by my fire, tell me
what is your comfort food?
Author’s Biography
Emerging writer and fully grown MIT nerd, Jane (Yevgenia!) Muschenetz, was granted asylum in the US as a Jewish refugee from Ukraine at 10yrs old. Creator of PalmFrondZoo.com, Jane’s work also appears or is forthcoming in The San Diego Poetry Annual, Meat for Tea, Sheila-Na-Gig, Mom Egg Review, Quiet Lightning and elsewhere.
