by Janay Cosner

Our skin looks like baked potatoes.
Mascara springs from our watery eyes.
Our lips pucker in red creased smudges.
Three silver earrings — a half moon,
a star, a grinning sun — dangle
from holes in our left ears,
clank like wind chimes when we walk.
Our hair is braided tight.
We wear embroidered blouses,
show off rolls of our midsections
and back fat bursts from our bra straps.
Flowing skirts hide our elephant legs.
We pick out orthopedic shoes
with the same enthusiasm
we used to pick out lingerie.
We listen closely to talk of yoga, estrogen,
collagen, and whatever else will defy aging,
hug often looking like crooked sticks in a tepee,
speak in tongues of wisdom.
As we age, we are more so.
We are parched for love,
famished for touch.
Men disguised as vultures fly
out of tall grass when we pass.
Penises like a picket fence surround us.
A tiny shudder goes through us
as though our souls have the chills.
Sad women, we cross the rainy Rocky Mountains
which look like green wrinkled sheets,
turn our watches back two hours,
throw ourselves in a scary future.
We need to be washed by rest.

by Jerome Rothenberg

Improvisation 1
foreshadowed

a fat child
blind
among the dead

now crawling
over the heaps of
sleeping bodies

since divided
gagging
split in quarters

comes to life
again
flat on the pavement

until it rises
to engorge his body
barely

where it
abandons shape
foreshadowed

time & space
dissolved
& done with

by Jerome Rothenberg

After Migrations
a variation for Gloria Gervitz (1943 —2022)

the silence of the legs
she wraps around us
more thrilling still
than words
that shower down
louder than rain
to dazzle us
like pollen
or the cries
of shofars
words & photographs
in cages
dishes shattered
where the night
brings visions
neither you nor I
immune from it
a luscious madness
grinds the bougainvilleas
into dust or froth
the steam of rivers
seeping through
our kitchens
fever ecstasy
the more she masturbates
the more a whiteness
echoes through the water
beckoning a sexual kol nidre
a recklessness of clouds
green waters
the vertigos of rosh hashana
a background marked
by absences
as much as not
daylight erupting
in the east
the season too
when violets
bring madness
their voluptuousness
like yours or mine
our porches heavy
with their swelling
vagrant like acacias
in our dreams
of death & dying
verandas plastered over
syrups splashing
into empty washbasins
the delights of silence
of prayers with scents & colors
signal a break
a gulf insomnia exposes
a rosary lost in a synagogue
that raises questions
like a shattered faucet
air that snaps a willow
death that brings all willows down
like red fruit
turning brown
like fermentations bringing perfumes
to your fingers
less than nothing
like the wings of seagulls flapping
like saliva oozing
years a grandmother might count
reading the Zohar in a bathtub
whimsical & mad
like forced migrations
on a summer day

1.vi.22

by Jane Pfefferkorn

I grieve
for him whole,

before three doctors denied
the nasty nasal cancer,
the cancer that Mohs couldn’t clear,

before he said, “Hit it with everything,”
and the surgeons slashed
the nose and cheek from his face,
severing half the nerves to his mouth,

before anesthesia fried his mind
and radiation blasted his brain,

before the accelerated dementia
destroyed a David in the courtroom,
drove him to leap from a moving car
and deposited him in Memory Care,

until the pink of first light nudges
me to gather myself and go to him,
turning my thoughts

to the sparkle
in his eyes when he sees me,

the chortle in his voice
as he tries to call my name,

the touch of his hands in mine
when he struggles to stand and embrace me,

the tingle when his half–mouth
touches my lips

the joy as his entire body shouts
the words he once spoke,
“We are so lucky; We are still in love.”