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!
Results
Results After dropping gutter ball upon gutter ball, my mother, in her skinny eighties, who’d never bowled or played a sport in her long, immigrant life, got up for her last try, following our visiting son’s sixth or seventh spare. Desperate for something to do in our town, he’d told us and his grandparents bowling would be fun. So Mom stood at the lane in the Grasshoppers flats she hadn’t exchanged for bowling shoes, holding the ball in both hands, fingers avoiding the holes, then set it down, with a little nudge. The ball began to roll with preternatural slowness; it seemed it might take eternity for her turn to be done. It was infinitely slower than the arc of the moral universe, but surprisingly steady. Still, we could have placed bets on inertia or friction while waiting—until it hit the head pin at the magic angle, and as we gaped, and mother clapped her hands together, mesmerized, one pin after another languidly lost balance, tripping a brother, until they all lay felled like a forest during a volcanic eruption, and the scoreboard lit up. What were the odds? One to ten thousand? It felt like an oppressed peasant winning the presidency in some third-world country. My mother’s smile looked shy, but secretly victorious as a Valhalla warrior’s. And Dad and Gramps and Dan and I whooped and hooted for her joy. Your Daily Poem, October 6, 2021. http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=3866
If I Could Use the Wind Phone…
If I Could Use the Wind Phone... Inside [the phone box] there is an old black telephone, disconnected, that carries voices into the wind....[P]eople who have lost someone... pick up the receiver to speak to the other side. —Literary Hub, March 17, 2021 I think I would feel shy with Mom and Dad, settled for decades in their grey subterranean country, wandering passageways in their no longer new shapes permeable as vapor, whispering in their no longer new language—fainter than air brushing my ears— and faltering, now, in the language we once shared. It might be easier to talk with my brother-in-law, only three years gone, to finally return his generous weekly calls inquiring after each of the members of his brother’s nuclear family, even the dogs. Perhaps I could be hearty with him, as if he were in for a brief hospital stay, and coming home soon. But my questions would stick in my throat, as they do when I think of my uncles and aunts, my sister-in-law, my cousins and friends—all dispersed on the wind: Are you sleeping comfortably? Are you able to eat? Those who manage to use the wind phone must talk the way I talk to our living dogs, patting myself with words as I move through my day on those rare occasions when you, my love, have traveled far from home... For my lunch—tuna on sourdough? Or cheese and tomato? Chime in, guys. But, if you depart to Forever before me, and silence buzzes like static in my ears, and the house fills with a viscous invisible fog I self-consciously push through, preternaturally alone— your absolute Absence will make all words withdraw. Originally published in Gyroscope Review (Fall Crone Power Issue, 2022).
WRITING ASSISTANT BIO
Ally and Austin (the larger of my two dog helpers) are, apparently, half-siblings; my husband and I adopted them from a rescue center in Southern California over five years ago, when they were about five. They love to keep me company in my study (oops, their den) while I am writing. Mainly they sleep. Or air out their bellies, holding their four paws in the air, bent at whatever the dog equivalent of “wrist” is (while sort of sleeping). They are excellent, calming company. They never comment unfavorably on rough drafts. In fact, they never comment at all. Perhaps it’s undeserved, but I like being their be-all and end-all; when they wake up (those relatively few moments), their eyes are fixed on mine. In the photo, they are occupying a living room chair they have usurped, having followed me there.
AUTHOR BIO
Judy Kronenfeld’s five full-length books of poetry include Groaning and Singing (FutureCycle, 2022), Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017), and Shimmer (WordTech, 2012) (all of these are available on Amazon). Her poems have appeared in four dozen anthologies and in many journals including Cider Press Review, Gyroscope Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Ohio Review, One Art, Rattle, Sheila-Na-Gig, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Verdad. Judy has also published criticism—including King Lear and the Naked Truth (Duke, 1998)—short stories, and creative nonfiction. Her sixth book of poems, If Only There Were Stations of the Air, will be released by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions at the end of March or beginning of April, and her third chapbook, Oh Memory, You Unlocked Cabinet of Amazements!, is forthcoming from Bamboo Dart in June, 2024. Her memoir-in-essays, Apartness, will be published by Inlandia Books in 2024/2025.
Pre-orders Stations until April 1
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
April 17 – Jacqueline Jules
April 18 – Amanda Hayden
April 19 – Lisa Zimmerman
April 20 – Richard Jordan
April 21 – Beth Kanell
April 22 – Kari Gunter-Seymour
April 23 – Jane Edna Mohler
April 24 – Susan Cummins Miller
April 25 – Kathleen Wedl
April 26 – Judy Kronenfeld