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!
Soursop & My New God Plays the Ukulele
Soursop Tresha Faye Haefner “I’ve heard space changes you. I want to see how it will change me.” Jeff Bezos on using his wealth to build rockets. I understand, El Jeffe, why you must build your rockets to nowhere. For the hungry we have with us always, but you are temporary. Small as a fever. How can you resist the temptation to see a moment of largess spinning, pear-tilted. Alive. I too have spent too much on myself. Shopping at the local stand, buying exotic fruit, I saw a woman who looked like me reaching for a white mango. Across her arm a black rose tattoo blossomed, and that changed me in ways I can’t describe. I let my old life die, and still I go on living. Starting over, like a flower stolen from a flower shop that survives on a counter. And I can tell you, all moments are the same moment. The moment we become conscious of what we are holding. Here is the inside of a green soursop. Here is the face of the entire universe falling open in my hand. What will you do next, Jeff, now that you’ve seen it? The green world spinning, without you. What do any of us tiny deities do when we’re no longer afraid to die? Originally published in When the Moon Had Antlers, Pine Row Press, 2023 My New God Plays the Ukulele Knows how to mend the strings. Is stuck on this island with me, gets hungry at regular intervals. Does not check their clock. My new God is deaf to praise. Lives in a world of silent sinners. Loves the Brazilian red cardinal. Lusts after the color green. My new God worships honeybees. Keeps track of their numbers. Is replanting milk thistle and clover. Is protecting scorpions and snakes. Whistles silence like a seahawk waiting overhead in the trees. My God wastes mangoes. Wastes hours they invented sleeping in hammocks with a cat curled in their lap. Lets so many things rot and die and come back as sapling or dream. My God likes to swim in the river. Race the boats like a doll’s porpoise. Appears to us in the body of a stranded whale. Wears the fins of a shark. Cuts you like coral. My God fattens our hands with honeyberry. Plumps up the skin with bee-sting. Talks to us in blister. Is trying to get our attention. My God breaks the tree with lighting, the sidewalk with seedling, heals the sunburn and every scar. Calls to us in the lonely voice of a grey-eyed loon. My God is everywhere. Reflects itself in the shimmer of pond water, enters the body through a wound. Originally published in When the Moon Had Antlers, Pine Row Press, 2023
WRITING ASSISTANT BIO
Bio of the Bird on the Birdfeeder
The Western Bluebird perched on the fence outside Tresha’s window wishes to be known simply as “bird.” Bird has no name that can be pronounced in human language, or spelled using any alphabet. Bird was born in North Carolina earlier this year and shortly thereafter began its illustrious career as a morning singer. It can be found on fences between the forest and the condo complex on the southeast side of Winston-Salem, where Tresha lives. It hopes that its song inspires other birds to sing, even the poor, wingless birds like Tresha who must form music with black and white marks on paper as a rudimentary form of song.
AUTHOR BIO
Tresha Faye Haefner’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in several journals and magazines, most notably Blood Lotus, Blue Mesa Review, The Cincinnati Review, Five South, Hunger Mountain, Mid-America Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Radar, Rattle, TinderBox and Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her work has garnered several accolades, including the 2011 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, and a 2012, 2020, and 2021 nomination for a Pushcart. Her first manuscript, Pleasures of the Bear was a finalist for prizes from both Moon City Press and Glass Lyre Press. It was published by Pine Row Press in 2023 under the title When the Moon Had Antlers.
Facebook.com/tresha.haefner
(X) twitter.com/f_tresha
instagram/poetsofthesalon
www.thepoetrysalon.com
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
April 27 – Claudia M. Reder
April 28 – Tresha Faye Haefner