Poetry by Yvonne Zipter
Whiskey Days
In the summer months, we drink gin,
crisp and fresh as a dip in Vermont’s Dog River.
As days grow shorter and heat less generous,
we tend toward whiskeys and the warm glow
of their amber, suspending us in time.
The apple tree, this late October evening,
its branches knotted as my fingers, leans wearily
on the garage, beyond the frosted windows—
one of which is nearly blind anyway
from the moisture between its panes—
and in the cone of light enveloping the table,
we lift heavy-bottomed glasses to our lips
and sip firelight straight into our bellies,
feeling a kinship now with the fireflies
we left behind in the gin days of July or August.
After Chemo
Some folks’ hair comes back curly
when it used to be straight, comes back
a skosh lighter or darker, thicker
or thinner. My hair came back stylish,
free-spirited as rapids in a rambling river.
And now I’ve rinsed it rosy, the silvery
strands like road flares with their wink
of pink, the darker hair sepia toned,
somehow, as if I were a hand-painted
tintype, like the ones from my grandmother
with only the subjects’ cheeks rouged
as if they’d just been caught in a lie.
Like Stitches in a Hem
or staples across a wound,
seven bluegills form a line,
a semicircle — noses east, tails
west — around a fish three times
their size, a bass pointing true
north, like the bar in a compass.
The bluegills hold their positions
like soldiers waiting for orders,
immobile but for the occasional flick
of a fin, the twitch of a tail. Patience?
Or peace? Or maybe those are the same
thing. Shadows of people walking by
pass over them like dark clouds. They don’t
break formation. Only the furry green weeds
move, undulating softly alongside the bass.
It occurs to me that the bluegills, the bass,
and I are meditating, the water
enveloping us all in stillness.
It occurs to me that I am the needle,
my eye threading us together.
Yvonne Zipter is the author of the poetry collections The Wordless Lullaby of Crickets (forthcoming, 2023), Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound, The Patience of Metal, and Like Some Bookie God. Her published poems are currently being sold individually in Chicago in two repurposed toy-vending machines, the proceeds of which are donated to the nonprofit arts organization Arts Alive Chicago. She is also the author of the nonfiction books Diamonds Are a Dyke’s Best Friend and Ransacking the Closet and the Russian historical novel Infraction.
Arcturus 