"Setting Course", "Clouds", "Words to the West", "Newsprint", and "Prayer Shawl" By Jan Wiezorek

Setting Course

She is setting up her garage sale,

telling me her life story

as a series of whitecaps,

no, no, another no,

hope churned

to nope.

And I see her weathervane, copper,

a desktop model with a ship on top,

its course set everywhere

like dark tattoos,

floating skeleton masts

of her arms in the sailing wake of the sun.

“Throw us up, cancer, call us,”

she says, her clouds spinning,

offering herself like goods

flung to the winds. I’m thinking

of waves and pulleys, leaning

toward a trip, with nuts and bolts

rigging the journey. “I want to go,”

she howls, wearing her lamb’s wool

in the breeze, an Icelandic fisherwoman,

seaworthy,

pivoting toward me

into the current.

Clouds

You remember sky blue trades,

and I see the cirrus clouds

watercolor the sky

like a brush adding water,

tilt, and spin.

For added effect, a pastel

extends diffusion, from a cloud

to a skull, to piercing through the eyes,

to a birdy face, then an owl,

and finally to eyes alone

searching us.

Whatever we say has effect

in this cool air, this right echo,

this sky blue trade offering

all the joy of a universe above

interested in you and me,

wondering what we do

below the clouds.

I’m waiting for the chicken patty

to grill below the deck

overlooking the shade garden,

cool tonight, well-watered,

and resting above the light

like hope I will remember

the chickadees’ two-note peep

when I hear it. Sometimes

they just stare at the sky.

Words to the Wet

We sit on the sofa and smell cinnamon

in your cocoa. All our sprinkling words

listen to droplets on the roof and a Bach

harpsichord underneath a cloud clap.

You and I hang on like the maple’s green

chandelier seeds, and I think the world

is lost to us this wet afternoon.

We try to brighten faded lives,

wondering who will listen to our poems.

We write and rewrite as we hear them,

re-creating ourselves from brain and finger

to mouth and worry, quiet in falling wet

and volume in a stonewashed downpour.

I wonder how long before the electricity

goes out and words turn on our lights.

Newsprint

I touched newsprint as a child,

tackling the large sheet, lining it

with green, yellow, black crayons,

the only ones I had left, liking them

least, seeing no more than grass

and sun and darkness to tell

the goodness of my news,

a prize winner in fourth grade,

autobiography in eighth,

steps to confirmation in sixth,

my sinning self of any year,

cast in Fat Face and folded

into quarters, opened as any

paper, with politics and local

spin, pride of community,

and some columnar hate.

But deception? That’s part

of any story put to print,

set to sell for a penny

on your doorstep. By touch

and smell of newsprint

you have a playing field of grass,

the promise of sun,

the evil of a dark street,

a sharp crease, a twisted fold,

even some fairness doctrine

smeared onto the hand

that wants to shake

your open, honest palm.

Prayer Shawl

I am feeling inside

a blue prayer shawl.

We will wrap her with it

the moment we believe

the yarn is complete.

It feels soft.

It snags sounds for Mother,

and on down to us.

This is the same poem

in her last bed.

A blue prayer shawl

holds every poem-plea

(no matter how cozy)

around our shoulders.

This poem

is the same shroud.

I’ve been touching it.

Bio: an Wiezorek writes from Buchanan, Michigan. His chapbook Prayer’s Prairie (Michigan Writers Cooperative Press) is forthcoming this year. Wiezorek’s work has appeared in The London Magazine, The Westchester Review, BlazeVOX, Vita Poetica, and elsewhere. He wrote the teachers’ ebook Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing (Scholastic, 2011). Wiezorek taught writing at St. Augustine College, Chicago, and he holds a master’s degree in English Composition/Writing from Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago. The Poetry Society of Michigan awarded him, and he is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Visit janwiezorek.substack.com.