Denise Bergman is the author the poetry books The Shape of the Keyhole, Three Hands None, A Woman in Pieces Crossed a Sea, The Telling, and Seeing Annie Sullivan, all book-length poems. She edited the anthology City River of Voices. Her poems are widely published in journals such as Pangyrus. A stanza of her poem “Red” is permanently installed an Dana Park in Cambridge, Mass. See more at www.denisebergman.com.
invisible weaver when asked what I do, invisible weaver. then quickly before “but I see you, don’t I?” I define the occupation. some people’s first image is a wooden loom in a slant-ceiling attic, shuttle skidding warp-weft, shafts synching up down, no human in sight, so a ghost, a spirit, they think I’m jiving. others see a humming fluorescent-bright factory,… Read more →
The Eyjafjallajökull volcano under the Eyjafjalla glacier in Iceland erupted for the second time in less than a month, melting ice, and shooting smoke and steam from vaporized snow into the air Under granite-hard water unrecorded on geography’s grid disguised in invisibility feeling and unfelt— I hid warming myself under a coat of ice flame small as unimaginable big as… Read more →
I remember you wakened to a scratch on the roof under your window: a raccoon dismayed at its own arrival couldn’t figure how to disentangle itself from the wide, deep intrusion of space where no limb or branch, not even a lisp of leaves overhangs to grab hold of, no fire escape antenna, gutter, downspout, nothing but to stand alone,… Read more →
My mother didn’t go outside for a year. Under the wide ceiling sky, each step was a climb up Mt. Everest. The bag on her walker carried all travel necessities: phone, pouch of unscented tissues, lipstick, maybe a bottle of water. Unlike me and unlike earlier, she didn’t hanker for the street or its tributaries. Sometimes a hint of longing… Read more →