by Sandee Gertz

In Norse mythology, Audhumla creates the god Buri by
licking cosmic salt ice

Hunger created this place.
It must have been where I was headed all along:
lifted by December winds of Western Pennsylvania,
and placed into the silence of Southern spring moss.

Drunk on honeysuckle and ancient tree trunks,
state park maps and painted posters tell me
I’m touching the deep, salient edges of rock
where prehistoric animals once licked.

Gunmetal instincts in their thirst for salt,
the unknown craving of minerals,
when all they knew were their ragged coats
of winter, primal wounds of drought.

In bitter wilderness, they wore down the paths
until they were a trace, until natives
found their embedded steps,
bow and arrow ready.

Once Bledsoe, a Tennessee pioneer turned
a corner and saw the promised land of antlers,
the paths forming spokes of a forest wheel,
all leading to this common center.

Where they licked, I too crave salt,
in this sudden Cumberland Plateau,
exile arriving as reverently as I came to the iron numerals
etched on the Bavarian door of my childhood home.

In the brush, a dead tree trunk resembles a heron.
Prehistoric shapes in every dying limb, and I know
I have waited for this as long as the divine cow,
one day his hair, the next, his head.

Northern violence in my chest, forgotten cities
where I once laid bare on Dale grass, reaching
toward the Jerusalem’s Trumpets,
white petals waving from the corner of my yard.

Here, an oak stands firm to my right —
the dendritic arms of time breathe in ancient air,
the earthen grooves of this North /South divide.
and all I know of my hands is they are folded

by Sandee Gertz

Chautauqua Institute, New York

The first time I saw you play the cello, I knew
I’d marry you.
You said the flute may be the instrument
of the gods, but the cello conjures
the sound of the human voice — a cauldron
of tones stirred by your burnished arms,
the body of polished pine between your legs.

I could never not love you playing Bach,
all my suspicions silenced in the sway
of notes, the chords a caulk that held us together,
through babies’ first flips to the stomach,
the rolling of change to buy diapers. Until the striving
managed to take you around the sun,
your starched shirts no longer ironed by me,
the abundance an allowance to buy asparagus.

Until you died one night on a plane at
Pittsburgh International, and again in the ambulance,
and again on the table at the Washington Hospital
where the lights spun and the ER flickered with sound
telling doctors to rush to your room.

When you emerged from the coma, I wanted to touch
the skin of the twin, the one who died.
The one left I did not recognize.

You didn’t play the cello for months.
Instead, you chose the stage — one entrance a man
who wanted to be an Orthodox priest, the other
orchestrating a four–way and one reverse sub–plot
of “My Fair Lady.”

There is no accompaniment for that.

The last place I loved you was in the bath,
the bubbles a tonic for the burn of receipts and texts,
lies soaked in like Himalayan salt.
Years have passed and we can nearly laugh
about the days of beach trips or remember first communions
Tonight, at Chautauqua, I step outside for a walk
and hear the symphony.
A pianist is the feature, notes deep like the bourbon
a porch neighbor has poured me in a cup.
I watch the cellists wait to draw their bows,
then slide their arms in unison.
One is slightly out of sync, wild arms flailing
in a drowning sea. It is the twin.
I swallow the liquid, now a dark chocolate on my tongue.
I have no ticket. The fence holds me back.

by Sandee Gertz

A man once told me he dreamed I walked a panther on a leash
and I wonder if this means I am innately wild.

Or if I have tamed a wild thing.

As a child I was a rebel, mixing in Tupperware seven unknown
alcohols from my friend’s parents’ locked cabinet.

We’d found the key and toted our cocktails in gym bags and
drank
them over the sinks of the Ferndale High School Girls’ Room.

I was spanked twice for this.

Once at home and once in the principal’s office when given a
choice
between two weeks’ detention or the paddle.

I chose the hitting, the cracks heard in the halls at the hands
the Driver’s Ed Instructor who was also my Sunday School
teacher.

Each lick stung.

I didn’t cry, except today when a wasp is near or when catching
a burn from a pot or curling iron, I can still well up, remembering
his wrists.

Where is the rebel in me now, I wonder?
Is she walking a panther on a leash down the childhood streets of
Bedford?

Crossing against the light?

One half of her is still breaking into hotel swimming pools at
midnight,
hoping it’s not cliché; the other writes from her bed on a sunny
day.

When I dream, I do all the daring of my past.
Forgetting to register my car. Rebelling against trash day.

New adult ways of sinning.

I want to take the dirty things to the curb on my own schedule.
Create a new calendar of when things are due.

If I could, I would dream up a deed I could be punished for:
Something worth the sting.