Sandra Kohler (Sandy Iger) has three poems in the Fall, 2013 issue of Prairie Schooner, a fine old literary magazine. You can probably find copies at a good bookstore or library, or order a single copy from Prairie Schooner, 123 Andrews Hall, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0334.<\/p>\n
[Ed. note: \u00a0You were also able to read one of Sandy’s poems, “On My Seventieth Birthday I Try To Skinny-Dip in Boston Harbor” featured on the web site, <\/em>Poetry Daily, on\u00a0Sunday, September 29th, 2013. If you went to \u00a0http:\/\/poems.com\/<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 On that day only it was there to read.]<\/em><\/p>\n Meanwhile, she’s received permission from Prairie Schooner to post one of the other two poems, below, on the class website. (A gracious decision, since they don’t usually permit such publication for work in a current issue).<\/p>\n Gray Storm<\/p>\n A gray storm of a day: weather I\u2019d usually echoes, weighs. Overnight, email from a friend This seems natural to me, in touch with reality. Europe and the United States, die in pain, a Dante to imagine this reality. At my dying mornings through neglected gardens, fields, about plants, flowers, people; the families were. Walking, these shards of our past, bathed surfacing, float in the day\u2019s shimmering caught in its flood, she seems not to belong not talk away a morning\u2019s walk again, summer the nurse insisting she has to have a shower when, love her: her husband, daughter, son. She\u2019s neither only our shared segment of the past. When This poem originally appeared in Prairie Schooner’s Fall 2013 issue.<\/p>\n Sandra Kohler (Sandy Iger) has three poems in the Fall, 2013 issue of Prairie Schooner, a fine old literary magazine. You can probably find copies at a good bookstore or library, or order a single copy from Prairie Schooner, 123 … Continue reading
\nwelcome, but this morning, after yesterday\u2019s trip
\nto say goodbye to a dying woman, its bleakness<\/p>\n
\nwho wonders if he needs a shrink, meds: tells me
\nduring the days he\u2019s full of joy, nights, dread.<\/p>\n
\nEarlier this week the Times ran a front page piece
\nabout how people all over, except in parts of<\/p>\n
\nthe excruciating pain of burns, AIDS, cancer
\nbecause morphine\u2019s not available. It would take<\/p>\n
\nfriend\u2019s bed, what we speak of, like the souls
\nin hell, is former joy: our walks last summer<\/p>\n
\nold graveyards, abandoned campgrounds on
\nthe island where she lived as a child; we talked<\/p>\n
\nwe grew up in, our dead parents, married lives,
\nraising children: all that made us what we<\/p>\n
\nin the glancing sunlight, were lit by flashes of
\ndiscovery. Forgotten times, unfulfilled desires,<\/p>\n
\nair, an island of joy in the dark river of what
\nwas happening to her. That river\u2019s crested:<\/p>\n
\nto this world: shrunken, swollen, her head nearly
\na skull, her speech blurred, muffled. She will<\/p>\n
\nor winter, with anyone. \u00a0But her wry wit\u2019s intact,
\nshe\u2019s struck by the black comedy of this agon:<\/p>\n
\ndespite opiates, every movement\u2019s torture. She suffers
\nmost thinking of the pain hers is causing those who<\/p>\n
\nbitter nor afraid: a resignation which like her faith,
\nI cannot comprehend. We don\u2019t talk of the future,<\/p>\n
\nit\u2019s time for leave-taking, all we can tell
\neach other is what we\u2019ll miss: each other.<\/p>\n
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