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Teresa Gilman
Roses in the Sand, Your Hand
Teresa Gilman writes poetry, nonfiction, and letters. She has received prizes in the CNY National Penwomen's Poetry Contest, the Abacus and Rose poetry contest (Museum of Science and Technology, Syracuse) and the Rebecca Eddy poetry contest (Canastota Library, Canastota NY). Her work has appeared in the Comstock Review. Peregrine, Hey!, Kalliope, Just Us (Toronto), Lake Affect and the Women Artists Datebook, as well as in a chapbook entitled “Grass Stained and Wet to the Waist”, and a collection entitled “Fumbling for the Flesh of Song”, both published by Foothills in 2003. She lives in Syracuse, NY.
From the book:
Yellow Shirt
Rain has filled the pears
to bursting, and grackles search
the fields, desolate. The wind rises as I take
your shirt down off the line, and the old elm bends, protests
in its creaky joints and limbs.
The turning season yellows
the edges of the yards, and the wind changes
direction. I stand motionless, your shirt filled
with the shape of you in my arms, mended
pockets filling
and emptying,
wisps of you against my face,
your peppery scent in the collar, blood
in the cuffs.
Buttons batter
my bare arms with the lonely tick of hours,
and the wind picks up, fills with voices, old letters,
feathers, lyrics, roses, sand,
your hand.
Roses in the Sand, Your Hand
is a 44 page hand-sewn paper book with spine - $10.00
ISBN: 0-941053-75-X
TO ORDER ON-LINE
Also available Teresa's
Fumbling for the Flesh of Song (2004)
Two poems from the book:
Needing to Speak
My body bursts with heat suddenly
in the middle of a sentence I'm having
trouble uttering. I sweat all over
during the short walk from home to office
on a mild day with slight breeze.
Even so, the blazing up my spine suffuses me
in dizzying heat as my unbounded passion
makes a raging fool of me, and
even a little sun causes moisture to bloom
like the red tides in August, like spit
over my face and neck and arms.
All through me the racing, the anxious
fear of losing what I stand on,
of taking one step too far
over the edge, the fear
of falling forever
without a sound.
Leavings
The light this morning rests above mist
that whites out the dazzle of late October,
the gold and crimson downpour that muffles
and holds our footsteps, our dogged ongoing
in the face of such perils as trainwreck,
and stillbirth
and love.
Morning came on me as I dreamed
combinations unknown to me before this day, lifting
the blue of early November, the remnants
of your scent in a shirt left behind
the morning you drove off, and I
to save my eyes, did not look up
at that moment when you turned
the corner at the end
of my street.
Few things come so easily
and leave with such crushing defeat
as love, like the berries at summer's end,
clinging on as winter winds whip them dry,
leaves desert them, and even hungry birds
no longer seek them out.
Fumbling for the Flesh of Song is a 48 page paperback,
hand-sewn, with flat spine - $10.00
ISBN: 0-941053-17-2
TO ORDER Fumbling for the Flesh of Song ON-LINE
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