PoetryMagazine.com Feature Poet Gail Newman

Gail Newman was born in Germany, raised in Los Angeles, and lives in San Francisco where she works as a poet-teacher for California Poets in the Schools She was the co-publisher and editor of Room, a Women's Literary Journal and has edited Inside Out, a book of poetry lessons for teachers as well as two collections of children's poems, C is for California and Dear Earth. Of her own collection of poetry, One World (Moon Tide Press), former U. S. Poet Laureate Juan Filipe Herrera says “Newman locates the miracles in our lives, their music, voices, and intimacies.” Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals and anthologies including Canary, Prairie Schooner, Calyx, Hiram Poetry Review, Spillway, Naugatuck Poetry Review, Ghosts of the Holocaust, Prism, The Doll Collection, and The Northern California Jewish Journal.

https://sandhillreview.org/gail-newman-2015-poet/

I Came into the World

I came into the world.

My father was there, my mother.

I came into a room where the table was laid

as if for a banquet, figs on white plates,

cool water. Like a stranger, I stood aside, hesitant.

Music rose up and pushed against the ceiling,

shimmered there like a crystal chandelier.

People were singing. The floor shook with dance.

I came into a house where I was a stranger

and was made welcome.

My mother gave me her body, my father

his voice. I stood between them faltering.

The walls of the house rose up around us.

The roof shuddered with the sound of wind and rain.

Birds settled in the rafters. At night we could hear them,

the shuffling of feathers, melodies marking territory,

saying this is mine, this is real.

Did You Ever Have a Family?

Yes. And a table. Chairs. My brother slept

in a bed beside my bed.

Our voices were thick with singing

as we walked the rain-stained streets-

horse-stink, cabbages, the sky camouflaged

under chimney smoke from textile factories.

Home was everywhere in that place.

And we were the stories our parents told.

Did you ever have a family?

I did. It was winter.

We skated on the drugged frost of God’s breath

as if the world was a frozen lake

and we in our mittens and cloth coats

could not see the cold clouds

rising from our own mouths.

Did you ever have a family?

My father carried in his pocket,

my hand, our paces in step,

others walking toward us in black fedoras

and colored kerchiefs, a crunch

underfoot of dry leaves, snow,

apple blossoms, earth.

One was taken, then another.

The rooms of the houses shrank with loss.

Neighbors pulled shirts and socks, still damp, in from the line.

Children were kept indoors.

A woman was hauled by her hair

down a public street and no one called out.

They looked away. They said later they did not see-

in open daylight, at the newsstand, in front of the café-

Laundry

My mother is hanging laundry on the line.

As usual it’s summer,

the light tender and trembling.

She snaps wooden clothespins onto shirts,

slips, white socks, her mouth full of pins.

From the upstairs window I watch her move

around the yard in a flowered house dress

that ties in back like an apron.

Behind her the insect drone of freeway traffic,

and beyond the alley heading west

lies the ocean, white shoulders

of sand, palm trees and the green horizon.

As she works, stringing up long sheets and pillow cases,

she lifts her arms and looks toward the window

where I watch, but she can’t see me as I pull back

behind the Venetian blinds. I can see the part in her hair,

her pale calves and low-heeled shoes,

eyes squinting through thick glasses.

It’s as if all my life I’ve been watching her like this,

a voyeur looking out of a window

as if there were something in that body

I could for a short time borrow or store away.

Science Lesson

The teacher said, Mark

a small square somewhere

outside and watch, so my son

the whirling dervish, the child

with wings on his feet, that mad

hatter tossing time over his shoulder,

sat still for fifteen minutes or more.

He saw an ant straddle the ledge

of a leaf and totter there before falling.

He saw a pebble mossed with soil

and the way the sun showered it with light,

and pollen spinning off petals.

He gazed deep at the earth,

his face reflected in dewed grass,

as shadows gathered in folds of darkness

when a cloud passed over the sun.

The ground heaved and trembled

above the industry of a burrowing beetle,

and a yellow-bellied spider rode

a thread of shining filament

from the tip of a twig

in the space

it took my boy’s heart to beat

and breath to gather in his chest

as he crouched, knees bent,

hair along his arms a-shiver.

The Dispossessed

Father

He left behind his mother’s shadow falling like grain

in the doorway of the house.

He left the smoke of his father’s cold breath

in the shed beside the horses.

He left the lake, a wooden boat, girls’

hands dangling in the eddies.

He left the lark and the cherry tree

and the bundled lilacs dripping from branches.

He left his sewing needles and thread and woolen cloth

cut in patterns on the table.

He left behind his name and the work of his hands

and went wandering

a refugee with empty pockets and cardboard in his shoes.

Mother

She left her father’s shoes, laces untied, polished,

beside the suitcase in the hallway.

She left her schoolbooks, honor badge

and application to the University.

She left buildings stacked like dominoes and the statue

in the plaza where four streets converged.

She left songs spilling like rain in the courtyard

where women washed laundry in a tin tub.

She left the croon of pigeons in the park roosting in dusty trees,

the Mandelbrot and Babka in the bakery.

She left behind her name and good young body

and went wandering

a refugee with shorn hair and a broken comb