4 Poems by Heather Ann Schmidt
Qasida for Hibiscus
Red hibiscus--
my love laid before you in summer,
a skirt open from twirling.
Red hibiscus--
a dance among the dust in the streets,
blood, not dark enough--
blood that doesn't match
the crushed petals laid upon these streets.
Red hibiscus--
the four chambers of the heart-
separate yet entwined like the elements of
wind, water, earth, fire.
Ode to a Pablo Neruda Nude
Neruda said Naked, you are as blue as a night in Cuba...
but, as I watch you, naked in this bed next to me,
your midnight is greater and swells over
the Gulf of Mexico and covers the Keys
and the end of your laugh crashes on its rocky shoreline
onto the evening bonfires of fisherman.
No-- as you lie here, you are thread piercing tiny yellow stitches
that frame the constellations mythology built.
Your blue tastes like a grove of orange flowers
cover me...
cover me before you evaporate.
In Akhmatova's Shadow
In Akhmatova's shadow
I will stand in a
chrysanthemum dress
that loses its petals
in the wind.
I was a new bride once
and prayed to the icons
for a pure heart.
Maybe I am a reincarnation of
the woman in Kiev
in 1909 who stood
by the window
watching a requiem
take place on the ground
below--
the grass remembering your footprints,
the locust trees blooming white in your hands.
Against the Midnight
Every mother knows
When the moon is in the middle
Of the night sky and Ursa Major
Has passed over roofs
To the other side of midnight.
I know because I sleep lighter,
Listening for my son’s gasping breath
Or my daughter’s murmuring of a word
She can’t say during the day.
I know because I wade into the fear
That surrounds their beds
Up to my knees and I grab hold of it
Wrestling against the midnight,
The indigo clouds.
To be a mother is to dissect fear
And scoop its insides out
Throwing them in the metal dish,
Classifying them, numbering them
And adding another index card
To the catalog--
To remember when they can’t
So they don’t have to carry it
Out into the world.
Red hibiscus--
my love laid before you in summer,
a skirt open from twirling.
Red hibiscus--
a dance among the dust in the streets,
blood, not dark enough--
blood that doesn't match
the crushed petals laid upon these streets.
Red hibiscus--
the four chambers of the heart-
separate yet entwined like the elements of
wind, water, earth, fire.
Ode to a Pablo Neruda Nude
Neruda said Naked, you are as blue as a night in Cuba...
but, as I watch you, naked in this bed next to me,
your midnight is greater and swells over
the Gulf of Mexico and covers the Keys
and the end of your laugh crashes on its rocky shoreline
onto the evening bonfires of fisherman.
No-- as you lie here, you are thread piercing tiny yellow stitches
that frame the constellations mythology built.
Your blue tastes like a grove of orange flowers
cover me...
cover me before you evaporate.
In Akhmatova's Shadow
In Akhmatova's shadow
I will stand in a
chrysanthemum dress
that loses its petals
in the wind.
I was a new bride once
and prayed to the icons
for a pure heart.
Maybe I am a reincarnation of
the woman in Kiev
in 1909 who stood
by the window
watching a requiem
take place on the ground
below--
the grass remembering your footprints,
the locust trees blooming white in your hands.
Against the Midnight
Every mother knows
When the moon is in the middle
Of the night sky and Ursa Major
Has passed over roofs
To the other side of midnight.
I know because I sleep lighter,
Listening for my son’s gasping breath
Or my daughter’s murmuring of a word
She can’t say during the day.
I know because I wade into the fear
That surrounds their beds
Up to my knees and I grab hold of it
Wrestling against the midnight,
The indigo clouds.
To be a mother is to dissect fear
And scoop its insides out
Throwing them in the metal dish,
Classifying them, numbering them
And adding another index card
To the catalog--
To remember when they can’t
So they don’t have to carry it
Out into the world.
