Denise Bergman’s most recent poetry book is The Telling (Cervena Barva Press, 2014). A Woman in Pieces Crossed a Sea won the Patricia Clark Smith Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from West End Press in Spring 2014. Seeing Annie Sullivan, poems based on the early life of Helen Keller’s teacher (Cedar Hill Books), was translated into Braille and made into a Talking Book. Denise conceived and edited City River of Voices (West End Press), an anthology of urban poetry. Her poems have been widely published. An excerpt of her poem Red, is permanently installed as public art. Her poem A Building Away was a Split This Rock poem of the week. She was selected as a finalist for the 2014 Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Poetry Fellowship. www.denisebergman.com.
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 →