Thrush Poetry Journal
  • ABOUT
  • ARCHIVES
  • JANUARY 2023
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • AWARDS
  • MASTHEAD

Barbara Rockman

to cleave:   crack    splinter    stick fast to

crushed cardamon    clove   peppercorn

it was for a purpose    mortar and pestle   his wrist

scoop into black tea



not a man of kitchens he smashed black star tips  

late kitchen   dim kitchen  

black kitchen she’d blunder

into walls while he slept  

            chai steeped  

                        and her hands

held out as if it was her mother’s

spice brownies she wanted   mother and her

            spices on plastic spinners



all over the house flies settled    little clove flies 

star cow  cloven child   how soft night was

clove darts into orange flesh

that pleasure!   a whole

language of the cloven 

the cleaved 


 


Absence Of Wind     Aftermath


                           ruah, Hebrew: spirit; breath of God; blowing of wind


Windless dawn 
                                    re-ties her sash     what has fallen remains fallen  
            what has splintered will not be sutured

 

Windless noon
                                    tides recede     nothing strewn     nothing stolen
            a small room opens its door     one thought   two breaths

                        What does a body do robbed of velocity?
                        How does a throat bereft of ruah shape its plea?


Night   
                                    star-becalmed and reluctant to speak
            a cry shudders dark grasses                       bone cracks between teeth

            Give me the brow absent of inquiry and need
            arms hung useless     sails collapsed

                        In the trees     no rustle and bow
                        in the field  no one flees     no disaster rising at sea

 

                        Ruah: what quavers the throat’s dark coil            
                         and returns to it    song



                        Let fever lift
                        May the pond rest unriffled
                        May the blossoms be given one more day to be praised 




Barbara Rockman
teaches poetry at Santa Fe Community College, as well as in private workshops and through Wingspan Poetry Project with victims of domestic violence and homeless families. Her work appears in Bellingham Review, Calyx, Cimarron Review, Nimrod, Taos Journal of International Art and Literature and Louisville Review. She has been awarded the Baskerville Publishers Prize, Southwest Writers Award, The MacGuffin Poet Hunt Prize and two Pushcart nominations. She is the author of “Sting and Nest,” winner of the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award and the National Press Women Book Prize. She is the editor of the anthology, “Women Becoming Poems.” A graduate of Vermont College of Fine Art’s MFA in Writing program, she lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.




Return to January 2015 Edition