Lily Pad by Judith Skillman

Already written in,
this carpet remnant,
these unseen frogs,
this moment
germane and dear,
pedestrian in its yellow leaves
beneath cornflower blue sky.

Every instant
a reflection of my mother’s hand
thumbing the pie crust—
that dear thumb
embroidered with innocence
forever rubbing two pennies
together to make a meal.

Her precise off-green
taste for a life
taken from persecution
and the gas chambers,
where her relatives
perished though she—
placid through feast
and famine—continues
to laugh and cough
and avoid the nightshades.

Judith Skillman’s poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, Threepenny Review, Zyzzyva, and other literary journals. She has received awards from the Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust, and her recent collection is A Landscaped Garden for the Addict (Shanti Arts, 2021). She is the lead editor of When Home Is Not Safe: Writings on Domestic Verbal, Emotional and Physical Abuse (McFarland, 2021). Visit www.judithskillman.com.

Burning Bruise / Quiet by Judith Skillman

Burning Bruise

Do you flare for me?
How many others 
have you afflicted?
I see a log under the river, 
wood gone yellow,
a green bilious streak 
covered in purple-blues.
Let’s call a contusion 
by its proper names,
trauma inlaid,
car that ran over me 
when I was young
and carried my son on my hip,
husband who inflicted wounds 
with words and objects. 
Last night I tried to paint
Lydia’s teakettle. 
After I emptied 
this vessel 
into the stainless-steel sink
it sat patiently
as if waiting
to set sail for a story
about life and service. 




Quiet

I live seven years without children.
The kettle boils its rage away. Suppose
I live in a house under a moon or a stone.
I am old now. No one I need to please
lives with me. Except my self, the one
I tried to avoid with other bodies.
I soothed them at my expense—I own
no defense against those parts with eyes:

self-loathing, self-contempt, sadness, angst.
Left alone as a tot in the care of other
mothers and fathers, yes, the rain affirms,
they could not parent you. No, the furnace
hums, they put up with you but only for
a sum of money. A small girl. A worm.

Judith Skillman’s poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, Threepenny Review, Zyzzyva, and other literary journals. A recipient of awards from Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust, Skillman’s recent collection is A Landscaped Garden for the Addict, Shanti Arts, 2021. She is the editor of When Home Is Not Safe: Writings on Domestic Verbal, Emotional and Physical Abuse, McFarland. Visit www.judithskillman.com. 

The Tango Corset by Judith Skillman

I lean over cots to help the injured.
One man tried to grab
my lemon cup bust improver. One
bloodied face almost touched the spring
coiled inside a pad of horsehair.

I pulled back, leaving that soldier
with dumb eyes. The peach color
beneath my skirt shows only a little
as I lift my leg over the wheel,
and off I go. In the ward amputees scream.

I lean over again, and listen to birdsong,
smell—savor spring’s musk scents.
It’s not that I care to be a part
of history. Americana pulls
against an army of Edwardian curves.

I’m just a wholesome all-American girl,
the pin up of some movie star caught inside
a locker, brought without the wife’s consent
to that place the ocean goes
carrying ultramarine fevers in its waves.







Judith Skillman’s recent book is Kafka’s Shadow, Deerbrook Editions. Her work has appeared in Cimarron Review, Shenandoah, Zyzzyva, FIELD, and elsewhere. Awards include an Eric Mathieu King Fund grant from the Academy of American Poets. Skillman has done collaborative translations from French, Portuguese, and Macedonian. Visit www.judithskillman.com <http://www.judithskillman.com>