Two
poems from Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck's The Museum of Like and As
followed
by a note on the author
Slant
Rhyme
Both
sovereign and citizens
of this mysterious and approximate
land
firmly believe in the
rhymed enterprise of dark and card.
Here,
locate and collate
walk the dreamy streets arm in arm
like
cousins, and every
chapel and tavern serves up, in chalice
and
stein, its own blend
of aspirin and inspiring. In this slant
and
oblique nation, foreign
ears glean symmetry in the clanging
bells
of armor and drama.
The local moon looms off and near.
What
a sprung, imperfect
place, this kingdom of approximate
connections,
where eyes
always know light, where the years
are
forever yours, where
both lies and belief can pass for a life.
Le
Petit Hameau de la Reine
That modest farm, its minor scattering
of mills and dairy, a blue spill of
lake,
the
simple industry of pigeon-lofts,
and waterwheel, and grain. It's easy to
forget
the price simplicity entails:
the grassy slice of herb garden, the thatch-
roofed
cottage, the small field of cabbages
and ornamental artichokes need care.
It
takes a lot to keep those hills, the mill,
the clot of errant sheep in line.
One match
dropped
in a straw-filled stall, a wayward bull,
a threatening sky could still this
scene. Today,
the
cook sleeps in the poultry yard. The young
milk-maid has wandered to the meadow.
No
one's
there to see the peasant, torch in hand,
approaching from the gravel path.
They're all
too
far away to see – or comprehend –
the simple, careless onset of the
end.
©
Elizabeth
Klise von Zerneck has had poems recently appear (or due to appear) in American
Life in Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, Measure, New York Quarterly,
Ninth Letter, Notre Dame Review, The Pinch, Potomac Review,
Spoon River Poetry Review, Water-Stone Review, and other journals.
Her work was honoured with the 2008 Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award, a 2008
International Publication Prize from Atlanta Review, and a 2009 Illinois
Arts Council Fellowship Award in Poetry. After many years in New York City, she
now lives in her home state of Illinois.
"Slant
Rhyme" and "Le Petit Hameau de la Reine" first appeared in Spoon
River Poetry Review (Summer/Fall 2008).
