Welcome to National Poetry Month and Gyroscope Review’s month-long celebration of poets – and their diverse Writing Assistants. Enjoy the audio/video works by previous Gyroscope Review poets and be sure to check out the Author and fun Writing Assistant Bio at the end of each NPM poet post. Don’t forget to tag the poet on Social Media and let them know you enjoyed their work!
At No Time Soon
At No Time Soon
Someday, not soon, we’ll have a house with a wide porch
and a ceiling of white-painted boards above solid
square pillars at the front rail -
a place of cool shade during hot mountain days. When we
find that place, not soon, I’ll paint the broad boards
of its floor a pale grey,
like the clouds over the Rockies in the springtime, or the
soft fur of the kitten that died in my hands one
summer when I was too young
to know the bite of betrayal clothed as simple disregard.
Grief for that kitten wrapped around me, I walked
to my parent’s porch, my
stockinged feet slipping down the grey boards to comfort
and the safety of the deep-cushioned chairs
in the far corner, dark and cool
and as always and always in that place, the sense which may
someday (not soon) return to my heart that there
are places safe from the evil
in the street, safe from the ones who haunt the marble halls
where the pain we feel is just a card in a deck
stacked against us
safe from the ones who cannot see the way that some
moments shimmer, when fingers stroke the fur of
a motionless kitten,
setting it to rest down in soil, alone and very deep and
dark, without ever having had the
chance to breathe.
- “At No Time Soon,” published in Meat for Tea, The Valley Review in its September 2023 issue.
WRITING ASSISTANT BIO
She can (and very frequently does) snort while she is purring – a (skill? tendency? crowd-pleasing-act?) …. habit that has gained her a bit of local celebrity. She has half a mustache, half a set of whiskers, and absolutely full sweetness, as well as an affinity for (which has morphed into a rock-solid-claim for) stretching out over the top of my laptop while I am trying to work. Her name is Meme, which is pronounced MAY-may, and is taken from the Oshindonga word for a respected woman, NOT, (LISTEN CLOSELY…ABSOLUTELY NOT) from the term used for visual/verbal online postings.
As a kitten, she was abandoned at an empty house, and brought to me by a family member, on the condition I gave that I would keep her (and her brother, Scamp) only long enough to find them a home. That was twelve years ago.
How does she help me?
She loves me.
She values my love of her.
She reminds me of the importance of claiming your power as a “she.”
AUTHOR BIO
Judith Mikesch-McKenzie is a teacher, writer, actor, and producer living in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. She has traveled widely but is always drawn to the Rocky Mountains as one place that feeds her soul. Writing is her home. She has recently placed/published in two short-story contests, and her poems have been published in Pine Row Press, Halcyone Literary Review, Plainsongs Magazine, Closed Eye Open, Wild Roof Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, Meat for Tea Valley Review, and over 30 others. She is a wee bit of an Irish curmudgeon, but her friends seem to like that about her.
Don’t forget to read the Spring 2024 Issue of Gyroscope Review.
NPM 2024 Poets
April 1 – Cal Freeman
April 2 – Susanna Lang
April 3 – Marion Brown
April 4 – Melissa Huff
April 5 – Elaine Sorrentino
April 6 – Alison Stone
April 7 – Alexandra Fössinger
April 8 – Laurie Kuntz
April 9 – Dick Westheimer
April 10 – Wendy McVicker
April 11 – J.I. Kleinberg
April 12 – Ellen Austin-Li
April 13 – D. Dina Friedman
April 14 – Connie Post
April 15 – Georgina Key
April 16 – Judith McKenzie