Recrudescence & Other Poems
Recrudescence*
3.5 inches– The distance
between brake and accelerator–
safety and rupture –
is a slender perch on which to wobble
ankle flexed, not even a thrum
between Sirius XM music
and plunge of anchor, depth charge
as I return, distracted, to my own street
back from the vigil
for my indebted, repossessed country–
Moment of nothingness, mind stuck
in neutral– Then – my vehicle
squelched on asphalt
eyeglasses doffed. Scorpion blotch, damage done–
cannot be taken back
I am taken aback, hyper-
ventilate Surely a nightmare this didn’t happen
I will wake up but
I smell engine coolant, see
shattered aluminum, fiberglass–
a price tag on my humility
Dark cloaks my bruises, my fault, my self-
destruction. My car a smashed chandelier,
my abdomen a muck
of algae, shock
The arc of the universe pulverized
scattered across the scalding globe
in plastic pentimenti
My dead weight sinks into lapse
I want my poor sweet stupidity back
Then from shadow a neighbor I barely know emerges
brushes my brittle elbow–
Are you OK? his lemonade kindness
an IV prescribed for my pain
the labor of my wreckage
Footnote
* the recurrence of an undesirable condition. The word was often posted on social media after the 2024 Presidential election.
North Up
1.
Call it ‘the U.S.’, not ‘America.’ There are other Americas.
On the map on the wall of the Mexican restaurant
above my usual table,
I find the Americas,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
myself.
2.It is thought that the North is up on a map because the sun rises in the East.
Maria Estela knows me. We have a business relationship.
I’m her customer. She’s my insurance client.
She brings my plate of enchiladas
also a question.
Her voice sighs, Can I ask you? and shows me
her insurance bill. Can you tell me,
what do I owe?
I hate telling her. Maria, your policy
is in cancellation, hate giving the 800 number
to make the payment.
This is what you have to pay.
3.Or because the North Star is used by sailors for navigation.
I never had to cross a border
or fill out
an application. Destiny or luck or
reincarnation dropped me here on the upside
of the grid, holding a key inherited
from immigrant ancestors
who ate fish pudding
instead of enchiladas.
4.The Northern Hemisphere is the top section of a globe.
I never had to ask for a nice table,
one with a view of history or chance or the equator,
a table not too close to the kitchen.
I’m sorry, I tell her, if you don’t pay by Thursday,
you’ll be canceled.
By Thursday? Oh no, and she looks around.
5.The expression ‘going south’ means to deteriorate or decline, as in, “The business is headed south.”
From my usual table, I forget –
the way I forget water, the way I forget
gravity, seasons, my language:
The map is tipped in my direction.
There is no south or north.
I Like Your Hat
The Painting Called “Group IV, The Ten Largest, No. 1, Childhood” (Painted 1907) Addresses a Little Girl at the Guggenheim Exhibit, “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future,” 2018
After Hilma af Klint
At last you’ve come!
In your straw hat and high-top sneakers,
the same deep hortensia blue
that Hilma poured like a bath
over my ten by eight foot torso.
Blue, female energy.
I am the first of Ten Paintings that Hilma painted,
for the Temple
kneeling, straining to hear messengers,
her paint a lotion of sunrise peonies
and coronets, mystic messages,
garlands of abstract magnolias
mid-flight on a cursive breeze,
her tempera pigments on my paper skin
(later glued on canvas).
This was, for the record, before Kandinsky,
before Mondrian and Malevich–
Later, a famous and respected man
scolded her, Put away otherworldly things.
Things like snail shells, spirals,
dandelion dust, her sister,
her invisible dreams.
Stung, she willed it, we, her paintings
would wait like maidens
twenty years and more after her death.
Her sketched-in Temple,
for which I was painted. Her spiral building,
never built.
Yet today my visage finds yours.
In this time are little girls allowed
to envision space and swans and sea?
You, in your hortensia sneakers?
Are you
our longed-for Temple?
Faith Paulsen writes poetry from her desk at an insurance agency near Philadelphia. She loves books, art, music, and friendship. Her work appears or is upcoming in Scientific American, Blue Heron, BoomerLitMag, Mania Magazine, Poetica Review, Philadelphia Stories, Book of Matches, One Art, Panoply, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Evansville Review, Mantis, and others, as well as three chapbooks. faithpaulsenpoet.com
