by Deborah Bayer | Dec 8, 2022 | Poems, Poems (2004 - 2015)
Rising Incense Full sunlight can blind. I prefer the subdued brightness of Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park 117. The yellow on the bottom is a ground and a base. It works: black and gray float on top, oil and smoke broken up by the frames of a skylight. Ochre and...
by Deborah Bayer | Dec 1, 2022 | Poems, Poems (2021 to Present)
Instructions for How to Start Over i. It’s not necessary to destroy everything. Everyone thinks that fire is cleansing, but fragments of bone are left behind; ashes cling to your face with static electricity. Still, they don’t disguise you. New life begins from...
by Deborah Bayer | Nov 24, 2022 | Poems, Poems (2021 to Present)
Ich habe viele Brüder in Sutanen im Süden, wo in Klöstern Lorbeer steht. -Rainer Maria Rilke I see a stand of tall trees here, limbs all reaching up until their leaflessness entwines, a pattern on an argyle sweater. These are not my sisters, the scrub pines and...
by Deborah Bayer | Nov 17, 2022 | Poems, Poems (2004 - 2015)
Smoke Trees and Mountain Ash Because I never learned the names of flowering trees, they all seem ornamental, with tiny hard fruit that softens with the frost. Then the birds can eat. Seeds scatter, form new plants bred to please the eye, not for juice or...
by Deborah Bayer | Nov 10, 2022 | Poems, Poems (2016-2020)
A Brief History of My Life as a Coyote I’m not cóyotl, the Aztec trickster, the death decliner who succeeds through failure and holds the way open between the worlds. I come from that original deceiver, Prometheus the clever, who got caught. He paid with pain...
by Deborah Bayer | Nov 3, 2022 | Poems, Poems (2016-2020)
Each Image Makes Its Way The wall between us is semi-permeable, merely a membrane. It would be translucent if there were light here. We are cells, the tiniest units of her and we are alive now, revitalized. We endured the chemo while our faster growing sisters, the...
