BREF DOUBLE WRITTEN FOR CENTRAL PARK DURING THE PANDEMIC

by Jenna Le

Magnolias, long-fingered like a thief,
their knuckles purple fading to pale pink
toward their fingertips, reach out to stir
the robin’s-egg-blue basin of the sky,

to swirl their fingers lazily around
inside that bright dyed blueness. What’s a leaf?
they seem to murmur, What can leaves be worth
when we have petals silky as a sigh,

luxurious as a glove in hours when grief
will pace the halls of hospitals bare-handed?
I struggle to make sense of this motif,
this efflorescence out of season, blur

of muchness where so much has been cut brief.
I hope it’s hope that I’m meant to infer.

Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), a Second Place winner in the Elgin Awards. She was selected by Marilyn Nelson as winner of Poetry By The Sea’s inaugural sonnet competition and by Julie Kane as winner of Poetry By The Sea’s sonnet crown competition the following year. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, and West Branch. 

LOST AND WITHOUT A WALL

by Simon Perchik

Image source: Mirror (UK)

Lost and without a wall you are unsure
what stays dark, what will move
once a flashlight is waved in front

and the plane in the picture begins to flicker
taking hold one hand all these years
dead, smothered under the frame

half dry wood, half morning
and though there's no sky yet
you are flying again

wobbled by winds no one sees anymore
making room in the fleece-lined glove
that can't tell where your fingers are.


Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013).  For more information, including free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website.