Andrena Zawinski's poems appear widely online and in print.

Publications have included Nimrod, Gulf Coast, Rattle,

Slipstream, Paterson Literary Review, Many Mountains Moving

and others. Her most recent collection is Taking the Road Where it Leads from Poets Corner Press. Her full collection,

Traveling in Reflected Light, was released by Pig Iron Press

as a Kenneth Patchen competition winner. Her chapbook,

Greatest Hits 1991-2001, is part of Pudding House's invitational

series. Zawinski is also Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com.

                                                Four Poems*

after

I make cries like a bird; I give out sounds of grief like a dove.

--Isaiah 38:14

after

the cranky caw of the backyard crow,

after geese bellow their offbeat evening refrains,

after thieving herons squawk and beat wings nest side,

after night turns into a still life, city side, lake side,

its clutch of gray clouds lying low in the long summer

on its last breath, night nuzzling into the grassy hills,

perfect lick of light still at the water’s edge,

after descending into a rocky, watery sleep,

on the low drone of a cajun fiddle on the radio,

the smell of ash in the air in another fire season,

after this,

there is a woman

screaming in the night,

her garbled tongue spilling onto the stage of the street,

backlit by the steady flash of police car lights,

the shrill of her dampened only by sirens on the scene,

and then the slam of the cruiser’s door,

and then the key turning over its ignition,

and then the hum of the motor, then the sudden quiet,

the street finally at rest beneath a halo of misty lamplight,

after

a woman screaming, screaming

like the cat on the fence screeching in heat,

like a fist to a face or a rape, like a war zone,

like a womb ruptured in child birth,

or a mourner’s yowl graveside, or some harpy,

or the baby next door waking for its four a.m. feeding,

the neighbor’s shepherd barking at the muffled wail

under the milky light of the cracked half-plate moon,

late train in the distance pressing past the square

into the blurry shadows toward some comfort ahead

as I stay on, straightjacketed into insomniac silence

after

a woman screaming in the night

and around whose dark absence

I throw my arms.

Taking the Road Where it Leads

The city is banging around again inside my head,

skyline a glare of lights in a blare of amped-up speakers.

And the news is so noisy--there is a war going on

somewhere, over there, this time in Fallujah,

bodies hung like charred rag dolls above the Euphrates.

And that is why I am speeding onto the freeway ramp,

and turning all my thoughts to you:

Let’s take the road where it leads

out to the blonde grasses and wind bent cyprus,

gulls a blur in blossoms of gossamer clouds,

egrets padding along ice flowers at water’s edge,

lighthouse steady in its quiet coastal warning,

everything bowing down to an order of things.

Let’s make promises, as if we can keep them,

string them like beads into a necklace windswept

by sunset, as shadows grow long and light cuts short.

Let’s reach up, see if we can touch that sky so close,

or spark a wildfire on a lightning burst,

or on a wind shift kick up a storm,

or like some comet, let’s really light up this sky.

While I Am Away

While I am away, and you turn inside

the sheets to stretch and yawn, try

to remember other mornings. Waking up

to French Roast and toast beneath the thin

white veil of summer light. Shift opened

at a crossed leg. Talking news. Birds

a flurry of wings at the feeder. A span

of sand. Wind wild hair. The sprite of kites

climbing cloud flowered skies.

And since I must remind you

not to let our flush of sweet peas die

for water, leaves turn under, blossoms

tumble from the vine, I will remind you

of what I will bring back to you.

A bauble of crystal to spin new light.

My fingers making something new

from everything that was. There will be

plenty of time for this.

So when you turn inside the night covers,

reach for my hand, its ghost cupped

at the curve of your hip, never mind

those long cold shadows of regret.

Inside us there is room enough for stars

to sprawl a flawless slate of sky.

So that you will not forget me, come here now.

I want to whisper in your ear.

Lie still. My kiss is at your neck.

Swimming Lessons

The first time around I did it all,

the buoyant back float, fishy underwater scoot,

cutting the surface with scissor legs, breathing

and bobbing, readying for the day of the dive,

the big test,

a life saving badge.

That first time, I lined up with the best of the rest,

white capped in blue suits, flat chests barreling out,

limbs stretched tall as pride at the board. Springing,

the cold rattle of steel echoing off bathhouse tile,

I took my dive

and a belly smacker.

Twenty years later at the faith healer’s where I went

with shallow breath and a nervous stomach

for a second opinion, she told me never oh never

learn to swim, to stay away

from water and bridges

where death would tow me under.

But in my dreams

I am swimming.

It is raining.

I go for the curl

inside the wave.

I come up floating,

breathing and bobbing.

The sun is shining.

In my dreams

I am dying

for water.

*  “after” was first published in Psychological Perspectives Journal of Jungian Thought 50:2;

Pacific Review.

   “Taking the Road Where it Leads” was first published in California Quarterly 31:1 as "Traveling"

    “While I am Away” was first published in Karamu.

“Swimming Lessons” was first published in The Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Forthcoming:

“The palimpsest theme and quality of these poems is

beautiful. The poet is a conduit. She enters time -

the child she once was, the father, the mother, the house

in her heart, the trees and fields and cities we are now,

the workers...even in grief and horror there is tenderness...

and all the way she keeps defining what poetry is.

Her poems are like tender kisses at our necks.

--Sharon Doubiago, author of Love on the Streets, Selected

& New Poems University of Pittsburgh Press.

Cover Art by Michel Tsouris, www.karthia.com