Three After Tatyana Nadgor, by D. Walsh Gilbert

Morning Coffee, by Tatyana Nadgor (Ukraine) 2017. Click image to visit artist site.

​Homeless

It starts when the sirens start.
A woman vibrates on a sidewalk grate.
Her face disassembles. Eyes, out
of place, slide down her cheek.
One left. The other goes another way.
Lashes on fire. Rubber picket-fence
fingers grasp at her voiceless lips.
Where have the petunias gone? Wails
of ambulances swell orange-red--
not persimmon—rather the jaws
of the fire ant. There is no sleep,
no siesta’s rest in a molten world,
when homeless, kneecaps swollen,
          shins not able to hold her.
​

Full Moon, by Tatyana Nadgor (Ukraine) 2017

​Musings under the Orb of Night

Every day we should take a little trip
to the Caribbean or the patchwork hills
of Ireland—or to the rugged Pacific coast
with its rainforest of Douglas fir—just
to get away for a while inside our minds.
A little visit embellished by imaginings
 
of actually being there. Let’s pick a spot
never stepped upon before and search
for blooming native wildflowers, the ancient
 
beasts drawn on centuries-old explorer maps,
or that place’s singular hue of sunset.
You know it’s out there, different enough,
 
and even more so when it’s craved.
Budge, stir, yield, advance, then whirl
and circle if we must, but we must,
 
inching forward to undertake what’s new.
I’ll bring the checkered tablecloth.
You bring smoked kippers and a stinky
 
cheese neither of us has ever eaten.
Put on your kilt. I’ll wear a kimono,
and the tempo of the music will be swing.
 

Polonez Ojinski, by Tatyana Nadgor (Ukraine) 2017

​On an Armless Bench as Yellow as Ukraine’s Sunflower 

He squeezes his concertina and plays
for the sake of hidden crickets still
rubbing their crooked legs in the dark.
 
His craggy dog bellows to the full moon
blowing its jackal sorrows into the empty
blue of cosmic circling and poetic cold.
 
Look to the eyes—the hypnotic non-blink.
They stare past chilled passersby
strolling through their own midnights.
 
The city gate is broken. It keeps nothing
in or out. Not the red thread of snake.
Not its wriggling. Not the melancholy music
 
drifting, unsung beneath a leafless tree.
His head folds over like a dead man’s,
shoelaces untied—glissando unable to run.
 
D. Walsh Gilbert
​
Dual citizen of the United States and Ireland, D. Walsh Gilbert lives in Farmington, Connecticut on a former sheep farm at the foot of Talcott Mountain near the watershed of the Farmington River, previously the homelands of the Tunxis and Sukiaugk peoples. Her poetry collections include Ransom, imagine the small bones, and Finches in Kilmainham (all, Grayson Books), Once the Earth had Two Moons (Cerasus Poetry), [M]AR[Y] (Kelsay Books), Deirdre (Impspired), and Bleat & Prattle (Clare Songbirds Publishing House). She serves on the board of the Riverwood Poetry Series and as co-editor of the Connecticut River Review.