A PRAYER FOR THE LIVING, FOR OUR COUNTRY: AFTER THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION, AUGUST 2024

by Jan Zlotnik Schmidt

 

in response to Deborah Digges’s “The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart”

 

Let the wind break through

the walls of our chests

draw out curdled breath  anger

from past reckonings.

 

Let the wind race through the chambers 

of our hearts   cleanse the pathways  

erase the stench of hatred 

strip away the detritus of ridicule.

 

Let the wind eddy through us 

through small openings  

dissolve the particles of despair

that clog the beating heart.

 

Sweep them away, sweep

away passivity   turgid like

the air after a tropical storm.

Pointless static gone from our brains.

 

Clear out the darkness in  

our house of gall  darkness hardened like dried

blood   until we are again open-hearted

joyous   vessels of infinite worth.

 

Jan Zlotnik Schmidt’s work has been published in many journals including Kansas Quarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review. Her poetry volumes include We Speak in Tongues; She had this memory (the Edwin Mellen Press), Foraging for Light (Finishing Line Press), and Joseph Cornell: The Man Who Loved Sparrows, co-written with Tana Miller (Kelsay Press).  Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Press Prize.

CASSANDRA SPEAKING AFTER OCTOBER 7, 2023

by Jan Zlotnik Schmidt

I huddle in a thicket  I have been through this for centuries 

Seeing   not stopping it  hearing screams  pleas  screeches  shots 

 

I still want to whisper to yell to stave off disasters 

but my words are ghost breath traveling down centuries 

 

I know about the arched spine in pain 

the bones whittled down thinned by loss 

 

I know the closed eyes that can’t stop seeing 

blue eyes brown eyes hazel ones drained of hope 

 

I know there are no sentences for horror for killing 

Just broken words like ankle bone breast bone thigh bone 

 

No dreaming flesh   no dreaming bodies 

No dreaming breath   always prophecies that come to pass 

 

No one listens to my warnings   just darkened earth  

withered grasses   stones of remembrance  

 

And the  blue thread of an empty story 

in an endless labyrinth of grief 

Jan Zlotnik Schmidt is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita at SUNY New Paltz where she taught creative writing, memoir, creative nonfiction courses as well as American Literature, Women’s Literature, the Literature of Witnessing, and Holocaust Literature. Her poetry has been published in over one hundred journals including The Cream City Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review,  Phoebe, The Chiron Review, Memoir(and), The Westchester Review, Wind, and The Vassar Review. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Press Prize Series. She had two volumes of poetry published by the Edwin Mellen Press (We Speak in Tongues, 1991; She had this memory, 2000). Her chapbook The Earth Was Still was published by Finishing Line Press and another, Hieroglyphs of Father-Daughter Time,  by Word Temple Press. Her volume of poetry Foraging for Light was published by Finishing Line Press.  And her chapbook about Bess Houdini, the wife of Harry Houdini, entitled Over the Moon Gone: The Vanishing Act of Bess Houdini, recently was published by Palooka Press.