Judith McCombs



DETAILS, JACKET

 

for Elisenda & Richard

 

The bedroom, winter light streaming in, white as the sheers on the windows.

The bed, four polished brown posts, foursquare to the winds, island of rest.

From upstate New York to 'Nam, California, Nepal, his lifeline led here.

 

The bedspread, petals or blazes of red, shapes drifting and held.

The pillows, side by side, head to head.

 

On the spread his jacket, grey padded leather, lies sideways and 

half-folded over,

like a sleeper turned to the window, waiting.

 

Quietly, she lifts the jacket: This is Richard's.

It's what he was wearing, she says. His kids took the hat back to Nepal.

No one wanted his jacket. She opens the grey leather folds, still pliable,

to show the scissoring, too late, up the left chest and down the left arm.

 

It can be sewn, she says.




Judith
McCombs' poems appear in Calyx, Hunger Mountain, Poet Lore, Potomac Review
(Poetry Prize), Prairie Schooner, Red Cedar Review, Sisters of the Earth, and Sow's Ear; Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Innisfree Poetry Journal; Feminist Studies, Nimrod (Neruda Award), Poetry, Poetry Northwest, River Styx, and her fifth book, The Habit of Fire: Poems Selected & New. She received the Maryland State Arts Council's highest 2009 award in Poetry. She teaches writing workshops at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD, and arranges a poetry series at Kensington Row Bookshop.








                                    

 

Home
Current Issue
Submissions
Contributors' Notes


Email this poem Printer friendly page

A CLOSER LOOK: John Koethe

Bruce Bennett

Jane Blue

Debra Bruce

Phillip Calderwood

Ann Cale

Michael Catherwood

Christina Daub

Nancy Devine

Paul Fisher

E. Laura Golberg

Erica Goss

Paul Grayson

Gabe Heilig

Heather Hughes

Rich Ives

Rose Kelleher

Douglas Korb

Mary Ann Larkin

Lyn Lifshin

Doris Lynch

Katie Manning

Laura Manuelidis

Bonnie Maurer

Joan Mazza

Judith McCombs

Rachel McGahey

Claire McGoff

Joe Mills

Jean Nordhaus

Scott Owens

William Page

Rhodora Penaranda

Jacklyn Potter

Oliver Rice

Elisavietta Ritchie

A.L. Rodenberg

Marybeth Rua-Larsen

Tania Runyan

David Salner

E.M. Schorb

Lynda Self

Janice D. Soderling

Jim Solomone

Jack Stewart

John Surowiecki

Sharlie West

More

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

 


Last Updated: Feb 22, 2020 - 12:30:13 PM

Copyright 2005 - 2020 Cook Communication.