After the End of the World of Fire by Marianne Szlyk

In this dream, I walk north
without subways to save
me.  Cobblestones stretch out
to island’s blasted end.
Fifth Avenue swallows 
up all sidewalks, all grass,
all trees.  Ash falls like snow.
Stones crack and crumble.  Zinc
white buildings hug the edge.
Chalk men in doorways wait
to cross the streets on this
burnt-out star where we live.
I step on jagged cracks 
and ground glass, dodging cars 
until I wake, reach Inwood, 
or die.  I no longer
believe in anyplace
to rest: churches, cafes,

parks that resisted this
once-pitiless fire now 
flickered out.

Marianne Szlyk is a professor at Montgomery College. Her poems have also appeared in of/with, bird's thumb, Bourgeon, and OneSentence Poems. Her books include I Dream of Empathy and On the Other Side of the Window.  Recently, she and her husband were part of Pony One Dog Press' reading at the New York City Poetry Festival.

Meditation on Green / The Ocean and I by Marianne Szlyk

Meditation on Green 

Catalpa leaves droop, giant cut-out hearts,
a child’s Valentine’s Day in July.

Vines cluster on the chain link fence, protecting
the beloved who peers out from the porch.

Grasses creep over the uneven sidewalk
with lamb’s quarters and poison ivy not far behind.

The wind blows in from the backyard,
bringing with it an edge of itch.

Milkweed and reeds choke the swamp, trapping
the turtle that lives beneath phthalo green waters.

Redwing blackbirds perch on the reeds.
They fly off.   They return.

One bird sings late at night when leaves and grass
become shadows. Owls hoot from another yard.

In the morning, the sun shines,
turning locust leaves yellow, foreshadowing fall.

The Ocean and I

When I lived near Boston,
I would go for years without
seeing the ocean.

I knew it was there
even though, when I climbed
to the top of Mission Hill,
I could not see it.

The ocean waited
along the Blue Line,
a line I never traveled.
I gawked at the river
whenever I crossed over
into the city.  I walked
down to Jamaica Pond’s
placid waters, green disk
near the end of
an emerald necklace.  

The ocean,
patient and steel blue,
at high tide or low tide,
bearing stones and seaweed,
was waiting for me.

Marianne Szlyk is the editor of The Song Is... Her second chapbook, I Dream of Empathy, was published by Flutter Press.   Her first full-length book, On the Other Side of the Window, is now available on Amazon. Feel free to stop by her magazine at http://thesongis.blogspot.com/ 

York Beach, 2006 by Marianne Szlyk

On a summer night without even
a ceiling fan to stir sludgy air,
I open the window to ocean,
the susurrus of waves and cars.
People almost my age weave home.
They’ve been drinking at Long Sands,
watching the moonlight shatter high tide.

Lying on the couch to escape
the stifling guest room, I dream
I’m back in my grandmother’s house
where, at 107, Gram’s still alive,
a tall woman shrunken
to an abandoned rag doll
on a beige mohair armchair.

Clutching the railing, fearing the stairs
will not bear weight, I climb
to where now only spiders live.
I open windows to flashing sirens,
fire trucks racing down Lunenburg Street
over the bluster of men walking
home with cans of malt liquor
from Minit Mart where Gram bought
hamburger and pink tomatoes.

I spring awake to the quiet
of an oceanfront house.
My elderly parents sleep below.
I lie back down, wondering what
my grandmother would have told me,
what I would have done next
in this other world.

Marianne Szlyk is the editor of The Song Is... Her second chapbook, I Dream of Empathy, was published by Flutter Press.   Recently her poem was selected by Red Bird Chapbooks for its Weekly Read.  She encourages you to send work to her magazine. For more information about it, see this link: http://thesongis.blogspot.com/ 

Walking on Nubble Light Road by Marianne Szlyk

In the north, the light is clear and thin,

                scoured of smoke and clouds,

                                of his cologne and my onion rings.

I can see each blade of grass,

                each pebble nestling by the house,

                                each streak of red in the tulip.

I smell lilac in the cool wind.

                Salt blows in from

                                the ocean below this cliff.

I taste nothing.  I taste everything.

                I take a drink

                                of cool, clear water.

I hear music from the houses.

                Carpenters keep the beat

                                to songs of summers past.

In this spring I feel summer coming.

Marianne Szlyk is the editor of The Song Is... Her second chapbook, I Dream of Empathy, was published by Flutter Press.  Recently, she was artist in residence at The Wild Word.  She encourages you to send work to her magazine. For more information about it, see this link: http://thesongis.blogspot.com/.

Late Night at the End of the Semester by Marianne Szlyk

Almost imperceptible 

thunder rumbles 

over low tide at the shore

you never visit.

You imagine the sound 

of a far-off train.

Someone else is passing through

this place where you must stay.

You listen to

the rain, the drums, the plucked

bass, the right-hand flutter.

You recognize, then don’t recognize

this song 

playing somewhere beyond

the computer screen

the coffee cup

your waking life.

Marianne Szlyk is the editor of The Song Is... , an associate poetry editor at Potomac Review, and a professor of English at Montgomery College. Her second chapbook, I Dream of Empathy, was published by Flutter Press.  Her first chapbook is available through Kind of a Hurricane Press.  She hopes that you will consider sending work to her magazine. For more information about it, see this link: http://thesongis.blogspot.com/ 

Fragment by Marianne Szlyk

Birdsong breaks through; feathery cracks

shatter the dome of clouds.  

Patches of wan sunlight appear.

Birds flit from stunted tree

to stunted tree, from stone

to stone, searching for seeds 

and sunlight, just as they’d

flit in the real forest

miles from this city park.

Marianne Szlyk is a professor at Montgomery College and the editor of The Song Is...  Recently, she published her second chapbook, I Dream of Empathy, with Flutter Press.  Her first (Listening to Electric Cambodia, Looking Up at Trees of Heaven) was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press.   

Interview w/ Poet Marianne Szlyk

1. Who or what inspired you to write poetry?

I’ve lived in a number of places where local identity is important (or used to be important): New England, Oregon, Indiana, one beautiful and terrible year in NYC, and even Washington, DC, as its poetry scene flourishes within the cracks of this city of transients.  When I was growing up in New England, I spent time in both the country and the city, so both places inspire me.  Music has always been important to me although the type of music I listen to has certainly changed over the years.  I have also come to terms with the fact that I am more interested in character and setting than in plot, so poetry is more natural to me than fiction would be.  Also, it is very hard for me to make terrible things happen to my characters.  In any case, I am enjoying poetry this time around.  I have worked with inspiring teachers (Reuben Jackson and Chris Goodrich), and the poetry communities online and off have been quite hospitable.   Dr. Michael Anthony Ingram and the D.C. Poetry Project have been most welcoming, especially given our different backgrounds and approaches to poetry.  (They are more performative, and I am more of a print poet.)

2. Do you have a favorite place to write?

I generally like writing (and grading papers and so forth) in our not-so-new addition.  It has skylights, a beautiful picture window, a stereo, comfortable furniture, and cats.  I’m not a café writer because I feel too self-conscious; probably I am a suburban homebody at heart.  However, I will do my handwritten first drafts elsewhere, often at a poetry workshop but sometimes in a café or on a train. 

3. Who are your favorite poets, alive or deceased?

When I was younger, I immersed myself in the confessional poets, especially Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton, but I also enjoyed more observational poets like e.e. cummings or William Carlos Williams.  As one of my early teachers (Jane Shore) was a great admirer of Elizabeth Bishop, I have been influenced by her, too.  I am not a rhyming poet at all, but now I admire what Gwendolyn Brooks has done, balancing craft and observation of her community.  At this point in my life, writing about community and place appeals to me far more interesting than writing about self does.  I enjoy the Chinese poets (Han Shan, Li Bo, etc.) in translation although I realize that translation is never the same as the original, especially, as my Chinese students have taught me, when it comes to their culture’s poetry.  John Donne has always been one of my favorites, too, although I must say that I prefer the secular poems to the holy ones.  I also enjoyed reading Yusef Komunyakaa and Daniel Nathan Terry’s poems this summer.

I’ve enjoyed getting to know Felino A. Soriano, Mary Jo Balistreri, and Joan McNerney.  Felino’s work ethic and dedication to poetic evolution are particularly inspiring!  Charles Clifford Brooks III has a fabulous voice.  I have been intrigued by Martin Willits, Jr.’s poems on Celtic astrology.  I have a love-hate relationship with astrology, but I like seeing the Celtic signs’ ties to nature.  And, of course, I’m looking forward to getting to know other poets, especially through Poppy Road Review and Flutter Poetry Journal.

4. What five words best sum up your personality?

Nostalgic, contradictory, reflective, optimistic, close-to-the-vest.

5. Other than writing, what else do you love to do?

My husband and I enjoy going to concerts and plays.  We manage to listen to quite a bit of jazz by old and new artists.  We like eating at small, ethnic restaurants when we can although that is difficult since I really have to watch my weight.  I love walking to work in the morning through the neighborhood.  I love doing yoga, playing pick-up Ultimate Frisbee with the over-40 crowd, and going to the gym as I would not be around today without either.  I love exploring new-to-me neighborhoods in Washington, DC and elsewhere.  We love spending time with our cats Callie and Thelma. 

6. What are your current, and/or next projects?

During the school year, I am focused on teaching, but I take time to work on my blog-zine, The Song Is… promoting it, recruiting new poets, and coming up with different contests.  The fall contests honor Thelonious Monk and singer-songwriter Gene Clark.  In the spring, the contests will focus on women in music as well as swing music.  I am open to suggestions as long as they don’t involve me listening to music I dislike too much. 

This fall I’ve also published my first chapbook, Listening to Electric Cambodia, Looking Up at Trees of Heaven, with Kind of a Hurricane Press (Barometric Pressures Authors Series).  I want to promote it a little more, especially once the semester is over. 

When I return to writing over break, I would like to revisit some of the themes that have inspired me.  The Camel Saloon recently published a series of photographs from Newfoundland, a place I’ve never quite made it to, and I’d like to respond to a few more.  I would also like to put together a second chapbook with some of the poems I’ve published recently, but this chapbook will be more focused around either geography or music.

I am also open to different themes and inspirations.  Poetry must keep evolving as the poet’s life evolves.

Seaweed on the Beach by Marianne Szlyk

Reds, greens, browns, and mustard yellow
add earthy undertones,
the taste of miso,
to the neons, the overexposed
blues and whites and yellows,
the painted plaques and t-shirts,
the stick candies and salt-water taffy
sold at the gift store.

The rusty Irish moss
on this beach
will not turn into
anemones or coral
or even amber sea glass.
Like the seagull accents
wheeling in the wind
past summer,
the moss remains.

[Note: "Seaweed on the Beach" appeared in Of Sun and Sand, Kind of a Hurricane Press' anthology for August 2013.]

Marianne Szlyk is a professor of English at Montgomery College and an associate poetry editor at Potomac Review.  Her poems have appeared in Poppy Road Review, The Blue Hour Literary Magazine, Pyrokinection, Storm Cycle 2013: The Best of Kind of a Hurricane Press, and elsewhere.  She edits a poetry e-zine at http://thesongis.blogspot.com/

The Still Lives in Season by Marianne Szlyk

Still Life with Asparagus and Red Currants

Shells

after Adriaen Coorte, “Still Life with Asparagus and Red Currants” (1696), “Still Life With Shells” (1696), “Shells” (1697), and “Asparagus” (1697) 

Against the black absence of all light, presence of all color,
the painter in late spring arranges a dozen asparagus,
chalky white flushed with green, and a branch of
currants as red and translucent as glass beads in sunlight.

Come summer, white and pink shells unfold
like flowers whose perfume tastes salty, not sweet
in this ripe and rotten season.  Dust hovers
over beetle-sized shells that harden and glint in the sun.

Winter’s white conch spirals away
from the speckled and striped, the mottled pink and brown,
and into the day’s light as thin and flat as a beach at low tide.
Absent all color, the conch points to the next season.

In spring, the painter again places white asparagus,
this time alone and enormous like an iceberg,
the lone survivor in its ocean, against
the same blackness as before.

Marianne Szlyk is an associate professor of English at Montgomery College and an associate poetry editor at Potomac Review.  Her poems have appeared in The Blue Hour Literary Magazine, The Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Storm Cycle 2013: The Best of Kind of a Hurricane Press, and elsewhere.  She has started a blog at http://thesongis.blogspot.com/