Thursday Mar 28

GoldmanJanlori Janlori Goldman’s first full-length collection, Bread from A Stranger’s Oven, will be published in 2017 by White Pine Press. Toadlily Press published her chapbook, Akhmatova’s Egg, in 2013, and Gerald Stern chose her poem, “At the Cubbyhole Bar,” for the Raynes Prize. Goldman co-edits The Wide Shore: A Journal of Global Women’s Poetry, www.thewideshore.org, and she volunteers as a writing mentor at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Janlori works at Center for Community Change, a social justice organization.
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Bread from a Stranger’s Oven


A girl makes her way through forest gems,
            sneakers on a rug of purple violets,

a sequined bandana for her head.
            Under moss she keeps soup cans

and a rusted opener, snacks on early ferns
            and meadow rue.

An oak tracks her height, its low branches
            reach to brush her hair,

crickets and owls up all night tease her to join
            but hers is a solitary game.

She pierces her ears with agates, greases her heels
            in bog, weaves twigs around her waist,           

dreams of baking bread, its journey from oven
            to table, where she’ll sit,

eyes on the woman’s hands holding the loaf,
            the crusted end cupping butter.




Yelapa, Mexico


that night she sleeps on a bed of coins
            and from somewhere on the beach
she hears a familiar cry     

            air can barely hold such grief          

she wants to open into the sea
            gape underwater like a whale
moaning out for leagues

            in the stuff that cupped first scream
her mouth on the broken edge
            of creation and fields of hurt

beyond the waves
            under a blanket of ocean
whales migrate     dark in soaked dark

go back to bed
            fill the mattress with something softer
until there are birds




Bone Hollow Road


The moon’s in heat, chiffoned in crimson gauze.
            In the meadow deer eat apples, nibble from trees          

they trust are meant for them.
            The day before fruit is perfect to pick,           

they stand at low branches for easy bites,
            lift high on hoof-tip for the greedy getting—           

give me Romes, Cortlands, Macouns.
            Now begins the season of deer under apples,

red moon low, raccoon young without mother,
            and addled postmistress confused by scale,
         
who ponders how much it’ll cost
            to get a small package out of here.