Otherworlds
IT FEELS OTHERWORLDY, Iowa:
wave-upon-wave of wheat.
Like patients rising
Halfway in their beds;
a dust cradle thru a broken window;
life was once here. Sorrow came.
Like the birth bracelet cut off, then lost: a reminder:
Wave upon wave of whiteness.
I yearn for a forever-home in which to grow old
How the heart beats.
Working its way on:
I take a deep breath before reading your poem
your poems, kind as they are,
are always knock-down drag-outs;
they take my breath away.
Reigniting my passion,
On the bed is laid my wedding guest dress worn on repeat
The crash that makes no sound
An aftershock comes:
I face the loss
Otherworldly
as it feels to watch wave-upon-wave of wheat,
ward beds radiantly, neat:
to endure the blinding gloss.
Editor’s note: “Otherworlds” is a new poem first published in this issue of storySouth.
Born in New York City at the end of the thirties, LYNN STRONGIN grew up as a musical child with a psychologist father and freelance artist mother. Following her parents’ divorce in the mid nineteen-forties when this was still not widespread, the second trauma of her childhood was contracting polio at age twelve. However, this allowed her to develop a gift for introspection. After studying musical composition, she went on to take a graduate degree in American literature and poetry at Stanford University. She is now totally devoting her life to poetry. She has written extensively about polio, the war years, and post-war life in her autobiography; INDIGO: An American Jewish Childhood. Her book SPECTRAL FREEDOM was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in literature. She has made British Columbia, Canada, her home for the past thirty years, but still considers herself an American voice. Other subjects important to her are the American South, women’s freedom, and the injustices done to girls and women in such institutions as the Magdalene Laundries. She was recently nominated for the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award in British Columbia.
