Five After Gertrude Abercrombie, by Barbara Krasner

Self-Imprisonment, by Gertrude Abercrombie (USA) 1949

​Imprisonment 

I face the door, my fingers too fragile to turn the lock, my torso too swollen to bend to retrieve whatever has been dropped on the threshold. I want to pound the door open. My disease trails behind me, a scrim to veil life outside my house. I am captive to a condition I didn’t ask for, an inherited illness from ancestors I could not know. 

The Past and the Present, by Gertrude Abercrombie (USA) ca. 1945

​Blue
 
Past and Present meet on a blue bedspread in my parents’ bedroom. We’ve already divvied up the nightstands, the artwork. I’ve taken my mother’s junior high autograph book out of her vanity table. The burglars took her jewelry. I used to find Past in my parents’ armoires. One drawer held my father’s collection of matchbook covers from vacation hotels and restaurants. In the bottom drawer there were once bundles of Kodak snapshots. The television where we watched Jerry Lewis movies with my father is gone, as is his AM radio. My mother’s lingerie, her carefully organized shoes, her hair clips and hair nets. The oak tree still stands outside the two front windows, the only witness to our family’s fifty-year life in this house. I sit on the blue bedspread and wish I negotiated more shrewdly with Past—deeded my father’s old pipe cleaners, his cuff links, monogrammed handkerchiefs never used—before leaving it all for the junk man.

Untitled, by Gertrude Abercrombie (USA) 1951

The Outsider
 
I always stand outside the door. Open or closed, its lengthening shadows, along with my own, tell me: Whatever is inside and I are on separate paths. Someone has pushed a chair against the door to keep me apart. The moon rises and in the light I see shadows of everything: every decision I’ve made, every friendship I’ve kept or discarded, every family member who embraces me or keeps me at a distance. But, in the end, it is I who stands outside the door, not wanting to engage, not wanting to chance disappointment, not wanting yet another betrayal which is sure to come.

Split Personality, by Gertude Abercrombie (USA) 1954

Two Halves, One Shadow
 
We are but one shadow against the wall, but we’ve always considered ourselves two halves of one whole. I’m language, filet mignon, libraries, and museums. She’s numbers, hamburger, and the gym. She had a heart attack, the “widow maker,” one hundred percent blockage, without knowing it. She was training a client at the gym. If she hadn’t been as fit as she is, death might have claimed her and left me with half a shadow. Now I have to go for cardiac testing. I reach out to her, as I once did in the womb, looking for reassurance that only wombmates can give. Neither of us wants to walk alone.

Where or When (Things Past), by Gertude Abercrombie (USA) 1948

The Ancestor Bridge
 
I alone tote the string between past and present,
the strands of DNA wrapped around my waist,
tethered to my parents’ furniture
and the photo coffee mugs from a food convention.
 
I alone loop the string around my hands
for tighter control, wanting to pull the graveled shtetl
past closer to my paved American present,
my ancestors into my circle.
 
I alone hold the string of present
up like a bridge for those
who came before me
to cross the chasm of time.

​​Barbara Krasner

Barbara Krasner is a New Jersey-based poet and historian. She is the author of ten poetry collections, including The Night Watch (Kelsay Books, 2025), and the forthcoming The Wanderers (Shanti Arts, 2026). Her work has appeared in more than seventy journals, earning her multiple Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Pushcart Prize nominations. Barbara hosts The Ekphrastic Review’s Ekphrastic Book Club. Visit her author website at www.barbarakrasner.com.