Issue 13
Winter 2003
Natalia Zaretsky
Natalia Zaretsky was born to a loving family in Russia, with imprinted love for music, books, theater and, especially, poetry.
She used to teach Physics in college in Moscow. In the middle of her life she came to a decision to emigrate, because she could not take anti-Semitism, official lies in the gulag of a country anymore. After three years of ordeal of getting an exit-visa, in 1980 she fled the country with her daughter, leaving behind exceptionally good life - her ex-husband, a job, she liked, plenty of time for theaters, museums, financial comfort.
In the US she had been working for many years as a computer programmer. Now she, retired, enjoys writing poetry. She considers her personal achievements are to be in a good mood, in good shape, in good spirit and … to write good poetry.
Natalia Zaretsky’s poems have been published in
Iliad Press,
Unmade Magazine,
Sunflower Petals (twice),
Sensation Magazine,
Poetry,
Two of her poems were finalists in the contest in Poetry Magazine.
RBC Publishing Co published her first book of poetry Autumn Solstice.
Doctor’s Waiting Room
An aged couple, short, thin, fragile,
with thick glasses and cagey frozen smiles,
walks cautiously into a waiting room.
They hold hands, tightly, up to white knuckles.
A small old black purse swings between them,
hanging over their clasped hands.
In the reading silence their identical canes
rhythmically double tap on the tile floor,
sounding like an Indian buffalo-skinned ritual drum -
staccato that separates the living from the dead.
They begin a slow shuffle across the space.
Her bent posture, probably from scoliosis,
still dignifies her old-fashioned garment:
a synthetic jacket with bright sunflowers,
poplin pants that flap around her ankles
like sails becalmed without wind,
men’s shoes with laces, tied in neat multi-bows.
A gray fluffy cloud of hair hovers about her head.
He walks a bit more erect - big shoulder pads
on a tweed jacket give some sort of independence,
despite white threads on the bottom of sleeves
and torn lining on the un-pressed slit in the back.
From under the jacket his bulky pants oddly grow
and flutter not touching his skinny legs.
His curly down of hair sticks out from under
his taxi driver’s leather cap of the mid-30s.
At last they arrive at the counter -
too short to reach the top.
A nurse drifts around the stand,
a white ship of a headpiece.
“Which doctor do you come to see?”
In one voice, after years of practice, they utter:
”Dr. Roberts” - “Please, wait”.
Now they have to make the same long journey
to the opposite wall, where chairs quietly line up
and wait for them.
How Little Time Left
“Just a little time left now for quiet joy.”
Yehuda AmichaiYou are not as you used to be -
when your feet counted rocks on hiking hills,
your arms - busy with shopping bags, hugging,
your breath - light inside a kiss, panting, laughing,
your body was like a birch’s trunk
slightly bent under mild wind
that wrapped its knees and whispered promises.
Changes come slowly with uncertainty and surprises.
Cough creeps in like a layer of a fog at dawn above a meadow,
sometimes it is thick - covers all - the grass, eyes, mouth,
sometimes the sun dissolves it into patches of breath.
Your worries, like brown weeds grow inside your thoughts -
your tears are not lush and green of leaves in a morning dew,
but bitter, weeping, when your conscious holds onto
your daughter, who will walk alone when you are gone.
Do you still have time to record the crowded thoughts
that your memory pours out from the deep of yesterday?
Morning birds, rain, moon, tumbling rhymes,
a plane overhead, flying without you.
Is there enough air between words you put on a page?
Do you still have time to draw a line in the sand again and again
despite the sea-hungry tongues that lap it away?
Maybe it won’t sink into the smooth wetness,
and for some enchanting while, you will stand before it.
Is there enough sea under your boat?
Every hour counts, every breath, every glance,
every poem, every voice of a friend,
every smiling kiss of your daughter
Rainy Monday Morning on Avenue CAn accountant? An insurance clerk?
A square bulk of a man under an umbrella
stands motionless inside a bus shelter.
A mouth - a hyphen between pale flatness of cheeks,
with dashes for lips, releases a thin cloud of breath,
flaps of ears hold up a fedora on a ball of a head.
His eyes, like cracks in a wooden floor,
with wan lashes, as if shaved off, stare straight ahead
in front of him, carrying yesterday’s expression.
Some women are both heavy and attractive.
Not this one.
She looks like a gargantuan foam ball
with carved dents for eyes, mouth and neck,
with short thick arms, sewed to its top.
A hand of a blond little cherub,
attached to her leathery black palm,
stretches up, twisted at his shoulder
by a school backpack.
He is secure near that warm mountain of a woman.
A teen girl in raven-black spiky hair
rolls her pretty eyes, circled with dark rings
of mascara on a don’t-care-for-your-city face.
Defying rainy and chilly October,
her worn jeans begin somewhere
in the middle of her hips, exposing
a pierced navel and a small tattoo around it.
Who is she? Whose is she?
What is the route of her thoughts, her day, her life?
What do those passengers of the city see in me?
Tall, almost slender, far from young
discrepancy of a figure.
Her face, wrinkled like a stale brown pear,
topped with a ridiculous black hat, either for rain,
or to cover receding hair (only she is to know),
and ugly shoes of comfort at the expense of beauty.
Only her bright brown eyes carry over
a hint of a mystery from her previous life.
Tired of waiting, watching, judging,
I start walking toward the next bus stop.
Will it save time? Probably not.
I will get on the same bus.