Jill Goldman-Callahan
FineArt & Photography
The bending the hanging,
Departure of the clanging
Remember
The mind in a hurry
Waiting for the jury
All that you bury is going to rise
Tears from your eyes
The bucket full of “my’s’
Contempory lies
No surprise
Open your hands
Depart the boarderlans
The body’s strands relaxing demands
Remember
Let go of your head
Practice being dead
Make way for surrender
Abandon the pretender
Arrognace and pride
can no longer hide
wash it from your face
join the human race
remember
Add YourHere
A poem from awareness
I have no gender and no name.
I am behind breath and inside of movement.
I behave like water;
I trickle, pool and surge while remaining perfectly still.
I make no sound. My sound is listening.
I watch though baby’s eyes.
You can’t grasp or touch me, but I hold you.
I am invisible, but I am soft.
I am perfectly comfortable.
I have no opinion, agenda or judgment.
I have no edge or opposite.
I am pure darkness radiantly lit.
I appear to disappear when you believe thought.
I have infinite patience.
I am the two faced god,
Simultaneously looking out and looking in.
I am a black crow gliding over a snow-covered field.
I am speedless. I live in action and stillness.
I can speak through thought when there is no mind.
Remember or forget me, I am waiting here.
Get to know me like a new friend,
I like walking and looking.
Meditate to luxuriate in me
Let me into your body:
like an avalanche,
like a waterfall,
like syrup pouring slow.
Who is living your life?
Add Your Message Here
The Secret Order of the Fisniac
Five cars stuffed with bathing suits and fleece jackets converge at a rustic camp in Maine. Coming here means prepared meals, blankets for twelve, no dish washing. Our family’s three generations live far apart. When we get together, something returns, transported through time, something we forgot was mislaid, an old sense of normal restored.
My sons tear through the wooden cabin hugging everyone. My parents fragilely unpack in slow motion. My brother trades his suit for torn kakis, turns off his cell phone and talks music, not business. My sister, isolated in city single life, relishes the group. Mom, who hasn’t slept in years, announces at breakfast she slept through the night.
The beach turns our trendy teens into playful children. Required reading abandoned, a ship is woven from rafts and propelled by shirtless boys across the lake. Paddles and fishing rods stick out in all directions. My brother’s blond, bean-pole boys stand near my dark stocky sons. Their makeshift ship unexpectedly sinks, splashing limbs and laughter. I absorb the expanse of water to get me through the winter.
A rainy day, Pop tells us about when he was ten, his mother died and he was sent to camp. Friendless, he invented a club called The Secret Order of the Fizniac, all the nerdy kids joined. They played practical jokes, once transporting a sleeping counselor to the raft in middle of the night. Pop is eighty now, I memorize his comforting voice and clouded green eyes.
The next day my brother and I sneak into town and make Secret Order of the Fisniac t-shirts in six sizes. At dinner we all march through the dining hall proudly wearing them. Is Dad laughing or crying? We are the secret Order of the Fisniac.
The Conservator
The old violin lay curled in the case for fifty years
One month's pay for their prodigy.
Through the clef's darkness an illegible sepia signature, Germany 1932
the cloudy smell
the bow hair a dead wild horse
The wood painfully dry
The hand; skin has loosened.
Her bones are stiff. her voice is cracked and faded.
A fine family instrument for her grandson.
First violin in the youth orchestra.
The conservator says" one thousand , but I won't do it unless she's used, Who'll play her?
The prepared words answer legacy, "my grandson",
The surprised words answer "I will".
The black music stand in the corner
The other language she used to know
The end draws pleasure form the beginning
the hands remember.
Add Your Message Here
Time to get some rest
We’ve been working over time for weeks
We volunteer on weekends and forget to fix the floor that creaks.
We place statues of Quan Yin in the window every night.
It’s time to get some rest
We’ve been binding boys to act civilized,
and bribing girls to carry burdens without sighs.
We need way too much coffee to get through the fright.
It’s time to get some rest
The country is bankrupt
My parent’s generosity, finite.
My husband’s gone fishing, but the rivers got a blight.
It’s time to get some rest.
Our famous aunt died, finally knowing she was loved.
When we left her peeling house a bird screamed from above
The knot came undone, the psychics lost her sight.
It’s time to get some rest.
We declared bone winter over
When we poured your ashes into the sparkling river
We inhaled you
your powder turned our black clothes white
It’s time to get some rest.
Your dolphin shape twisted downstream.
Was I the only one who didn’t see you in a dream?
You still speak to me from some great height.
It’s time to get some rest.
Satisfied with their hard candy potion.
The children said “in three days she’ll reach the ocean”
The mourners release the string of the kite.
It’s time to get some rest.
Add Your Message Here
I AM FROM
A home of crammed bookshelves
advertising the holocaust, movements in psychology, and the latest novel.
A home where the New York Times migrates
across all surfaces, important facts highlighted in yellow.
A home that plays Klezmer or classical or NPR,
When I was a kid it was only rock ‘n roll.
“I am a rock I am an island.”
A home where the memory of Kay still sweeps the floor.
A home where competition is a danger
and sexism is hated but secretly practiced.
I am from the yard with signs of a forest
that leave me starving for the wild.
A home where marijuana was buried by the side of the house and gold was buried under the stairs.
From here you can walk to the rinky dink store to get candy
from a quarter found on Dad’s dresser.
But we ate no sugar after 1970,
only homemade yogurt and granola
or gourmet magazine recipes;
escargot and garlic clam sauce which made me sick.
And we kids traded the pimento appetizers in our lunch boxes for peanut butter and jelly at school.
I am from the people who got away before the big trouble.
Gedalia Bear and his eight stern children from Russia,
Grammy the seamstress in purple floral and glittering gems from Germany.
Sam the laughing, crying giant,
and Dot the wise woman of Philadelphia.
I am from a secret suicide in the cellar
and George and Rose of the black Cadillac of Florida.
I was told,
“We will never be safe in any country”
“Family is everything”
“There are two kinds of Jews and you are half of each.”
“You got to eat a little dirt before you die”.