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!
Apfelstrudel
Apfelstrudel How Oma spread the dough in the air above her head, her spidery fingers moving too fast for my eyes to follow – a circus game of spinning – expanding it to the impossible size of her kitchen table, this paper-thin sheet she filled with the ingredients of her harsh love: cut apples, cinnamon, sugar, pignoli, and a half glass of rhum. I watched, caught in the heavy weight of inheritance, its simple inevitability. For years, my mother tried to learn it, yet never mastered its secret technique. The dough kept tearing. All those holes made by her even harsher not-quite love, quiet indifference, betrayed her lack of kinship, made it impossible to achieve an intact Apfelstrudel, to attain belonging; while I learned, right there, how to be an orphan, that the beauty of things sometimes lies in being taken to the grave. Published in Gyroscope Review, Crone Power Issue 2023
Eye-contact in four acts
Eye-contact in four acts I. The early morning, as it awakens, is so secret a place I always believe no one sees it but me. II. Remade translucent, I pass by the Arab grocery store of Lilla Tvärgatan where I notice a magpie, trapped in the body of a crow. It sits on the fruit stall, watching me intently until discomfort for its recent shape gives it an itch so awkward it tries to shake its plumage off, then sullenly it steals a shiny grape – deep dark jewel – and flies away. III. When I stop in the middle of the cobble street (where it suddenly no longer smells of drain), to write this down, a woman stares shamelessly at me: bewildered, half-disdainful. How could she know that hands can still be used for writing, that they remain an observant servant of the gaze. IV. I laugh. Carefully place my pen into my handbag – its bed amidst the books and other pens – to memory-laden sleep. Then I look up: out of the wooden balk, the yellow scaffold, multiple eyes are fixed on me. The Gods of things unnoticed benevolently smile at me, ‘We know you’re here’, they say, ‘Go on, go graciously on.’ Published in Contrapasso, by Cephalopress, November 2022, https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/1838220623/
WRITING ASSISTANT BIO
Hugo is a very introvert cephalopod who likes to keep his ink mostly to himself. Sometimes he will lend Alexandra one of his nine brains, though never an arm. He doesn’t mind being misunderstood, or not being listened to, because he knows his poetry is not for everyone. The important thing for him is to express himself with absolute sincerity.
AUTHOR BIO
Alexandra Fössinger is the author of the poetry collection Contrapasso (Cephalopress, 2022) and the forthcoming chapbook Recount and Prophecy (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). Her work is published in Tears in the Fence, Gyroscope Review, Oyster River Pages, Feral, Mono, and La Piccioletta Barca, among others.
She is one of the winners of Best Microfiction 2024 chosen by Grant Faulkner, and mostly interested in the spaces between things, the tiny shifts in time and space, the overlooked, the unsaid.
Book Link:
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