QUARANTINED WITH THE DEAD

by Judy Kaber

Your boots sit
beside the door
as if you will

creep, turtle-mind    
full of muckage,
out to drink

from the stream.
Hope is nothing
but a skull now

& you at home
as much in roots
of foamflower

as anywhere.
Once we feasted
on pizza

together
drank sassafras tea
laughed at

ridiculous things
like death, like pockets
of earth that might

swallow us
that did swallow you
long before

I sequestered myself
in a quarantined world
long before

my poems fell
into books, into quiet
word-pools

long before
madness descended
uncalled

Judy Kaber is a retired elementary school teacher, having taught for 34 years. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, both print and online, including Atlanta Review, december, The Comstock Review, Tar River, and Spillway.

DISCORD

by Judy Kaber 

A distance of about five feet
separates my car from the mud-
spattered blue pick-up truck
with the Trump/Pence sign
on the cab’s rear window. This
wouldn’t be such a surprise
except we’re in the parking lot
of the YMCA and I can’t help
but wonder which of us is
out of place. Red-necks don’t
come here to exercise, but then
I am not young or male or even
Christian, so maybe the world
splits into more layers than I
can count, maybe the thrum
of feet on the exercise machines
sings songs of longing for
the past that never was, maybe
the man from the pick-up truck
misses the canning factory
and the chicken plant and what
do I know of belief, of prayers
whispered in the night when
you can’t pay your taxes,
your landlord wants you out
by next week and you smoke
two packs a day just to keep
your head on straight.

Judy Kaber lives in Belfast, Maine, and her poems have appeared in numerous journals, both print and online, including Eclectica, Off the Coast, The Comstock Review, and The Guardian. Contest credits include the Maine Postmark Poetry Contest, the Larry Kramer Memorial Chapbook Contest, and, most recently, second place in the Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest.