Interview, Fiction, Divine Strangeness

 
  
 Interview 
 
 “. . . these details
 must be retained as mementos
 of . . . life.”
  
 —Emilie Brzezinski
  
 How do you interpret your poetry? 
 Morning fuzz, leaves, and potential 
 fall from poet-trees early—tree-poets 
 arrange these symbols that readers 
 resurrect like sun on orchard limbs—
 and they store them under arbors 
 of myth, reason, reflection, image
 —interpretation nests in disabled 
 branches, as a forest of brokenness 
 that floats its leaves from tree-poet 
 to reader, until tree-poems appear,
 falling into your eyes at sunset.     
  
    
 
 
 Fiction
  
 “All of my trees
 are fictions.”
  
 —Rona Pondick
  
 My first fiction hooked 
 thumbs into the fruit 
 of an orange tree—tearing 
 the peel—where I appeared 
 as a flared-pants guitarist, 
 flying upon canopies 
 until I disappeared inside 
 orange haze—my second 
 fiction was believing in you 
 under groves of elms, 
 long ago cut by their own 
 disease—now my fictions 
 are simple: holding your robe
 designed in forest-brown 
 herringbone, and cleaning 
 the counter with a product 
 called Pine-sap—where 
 life inside is as ordered 
 as tree rings, while nature 
 ponders its own fantasy.  
  
   
 
 
 Divine Strangeness 
  
 “A divine strangeness
 . . . compels us to see
 trees in an enchanting
 new light.”
  
 —Suzanne Ramljak
  
 X-rays don’t always catch it,
 but a tree is growing, her head
 is shrinking, and a leaf is forming
 from her neck stem—so we
 wait for our good, and trust
 in healing to define her
 as newness—or—here, skin
 is hammered into a tough
 aluminum, blackened with 
 markings of bark, ancient
 ridges, and mythology,
 much like a womb—or—
 stainless steel forms the
 bulbous nature of a trunk
 which light caresses—or—
 become Pan-like, and take
 wood for a pipe to sound
 out over magnolias—these 
 four bodies, as revelation, 
 turn to discover each in turn.