https://www.albany.edu/offcourse
http://offcourse.org
ISSN 1556-4975
https://www.albany.edu/offcourse
http://offcourse.org
ISSN 1556-4975
Poems by Amy Small-McKinney.
This is the Dying Language of the Ös
…But as elder speakers die, and a language fades, a group loses a part of its culture…Dr. Peter Ladefoged, Linguist
Thirty-five men and women in Siberia speak
with vanishing vowels and consonants, dream
of thirty-five goslings that slide
along Lake Lena
Here in America
I am my husband’s kun garagi—
the eye of the day—
His house is his dream—wooden
with a porch, three chairs—
no one inside except me his Ap chi—
the one who remains at home
Here in America
my day is long a short o burdened u
my milky invention of baby mouth suck
In my sleep a woman of the Ös
recites her husband’s name three times
I wake, name the ants trekking
toward oblivion along Lilies of the Valley
he brought me
I name them:
Vow, Frost, Vanish—
I do not want to disappear
What do the Ös say when they awake?
This morning I want to say:
Azen Azen
Hello Hello
Sonata
This morning a bird
finds fault with a sonata.
A bird whose name
I don’t know.
Little Bird, is your chirp
Berlinski’s Sonata
for Flute and Piano?
I grow weary. My common
gloom. My dissonance.
Imitation— variations
on a theme— leaning toward relief.
I lean toward love and memory:
Two hands, a sweet slash
of voice rising and falling above me,
then finally—the hospital—
they opened and closed me.
What is required of us?
I don’t know. Here is my hand.
There is your wing.
What if you hold me?
Bird. I am only a body.
I close my eyes, listen to you,
fly into a cloud blue
from breathing me in,
breathing me out.
Bird, this is my poem
of hope. Is there another?
Miriam’s Timbrel
The same confusion will meet you if you try to find the position or attitude of angels…they are also wind and fire Ps. I04.—Exodus Rabba 25
All I remember were the furious teeth
jutting from her skeleton face
and I had to kiss that skeleton face goodbye.
Little left of her breasts, her vagina,
even her knees and I wanted
to kiss those knees and sing
that stupid song she loved:
Dayenu Dayenu Dayenu—
It would have been enough. It would
have been enough. It would have been
enough.
Enough because she saw
the broken teeth of Esau,
saw her tongue turn to cedar,
sure she would become wind or fire
filled as she was with her faith.
When I part from those I love,
when I feel the world parting
from me, I become stone where
a centipede moves within me.
I heard her withered arm wave Miriam’s timbrel—
music of gather music of divide
Let me sleep inside
her disappearing skin,
skin that read my skin
like midrash dissecting
our who, our why,
unearth icons within
her abridged mouth,
listen for her unsaid
aside. If she is wind,
I will become wind.
If she is fire, I am fire.
for Elsa Orjuela
Amy Small-McKinney's chapbook, Body of Surrender, published by Finishing Line Press is available on Amazon.com. Small-McKinney is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared in numerous on-line and print journals, for example, The Cortland Review, The Pedestal Magazine, For Poetry, HiNgE, Elixir, and Poetica. Small-McKinney's interview of poet Bruce Smith, will appear in the April issue of The Pedestal Magazine. Upcoming readings include University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown on April 21st and Cornelia Street Cafe in New York City on June 6th. Her personal essays have been published, periodically, in The Philadelphia Inquirer. She has a Masters in Clinical Neuropsychology and teaches Psychology at local colleges. She resides in Blue Bell, PA with her husband and daughter. The poem, Miriam's Timbrel, is dedicated to Elsa Orjuela, Psychologist and enduring light, who died April, 2005. Amy's email address is: [email protected]