The Spring issue of Kestrel opens with Matt Zambito’s “Easy Breezy, Baby.” “This feral-flower fervor I’ve got going for you, / fibrillating the very hemoglobin…” The whole poem is fun like that, fast-paced, feverish, bringing in tax forms and Congress. “But you, you / soften the blow of knowing we’re slowly / decomposing…” A sweet love poem.
Christine Stroud gives us, “My therapist tells me I should stop idealizing love.” Which starts, “But to stop that sweetness — / to reach down into the wriggle of new puppies.” There are a lot of wonderful, sly images in this poem. “I want that fifth-date romance…” and near the end of the poem, “I will let my love grow into a bad dog.” Bringing the poem nicely into a completed circle. Very satisfying.
I enjoyed a diptych of triolets by Lesley Wheeler, especially “Insatiable Triolet.” “The tide wants in, / each wave a cave of desire.”
One of my absolute favs in this mag was Cathy Barber’s “The Door,” the story of a woman realizing maybe she got an incident wrong in an old relationship: “in those days, I blamed him for / virtually / everything…” This is opening the vein and letting out the blood, an incident of learning too late. Powerful.
Finally, let me mention Ethel Rackin’s “The Moth.” “Mercury rising — / heals bells — lust’s hollow hotels…” I love these sort of intensely rhymed poems, the rhythm rocking us along. The words shift a vowel here, a consonant there, a spiral of a poem, a helix. And a great ending.
Peace in poetry,
P M F Johnson