Turning the Baby
Go to the pool and do headstands, they said.
Play music at the base of the womb.
Let him hear his father’s voice.
Read him stories, shine a flashlight.
Lie on the floor with your feet elevated.
Meditate. Visualize the baby
flipping over, thumb in mouth.
But he would not turn on his own.
He wanted his head by his mother’s heart.
And isn’t a baby in the womb
like god, the universe, everything mystical?
He succumbed to being upside down
only when his mother lay on the bed
with a doctor on either side
grabbing hold of his limbs
through the flesh of her belly
and pushing him around the half-circle,
like turning the hands of a clock
from midnight to 6.
.
Luqillo Dawn
Luquillo, Puerto Rico, 2022
Each morning I awaken
to swaths of rain
sweeping across the patio
and into the open window.
I think of you asleep
a continent away.
I know this early dark:
my time to descend,
to be misted by remnants of rain,
lose myself in a sky of clouds.
Morning orchestra
of rooster crowing, coquís,
reinitas chirping their sweet song.
The clouds pull back
to reveal a half-moon
and all the stars: Polaris,
the Northern Cross, the tail star,
quasars and constellations.
Now a reverse of sunset:
the sky softens from black
to blue-gray
to the palest pink
around the edges of clouds.
How easily the pitch dark
absorbs light
and becomes a new color,
a new existence.
If you were here,
I’d count the stars with you,
whisper names of birds,
brush palm leaves on your skin,
drizzle humid droplets in your hair.
I’d kiss you like this:
sky-dazzled, bird-surrounded,
damp, awake.
.
Give Me the Raw
Give me the raw, the overgrown,
the unruly, the crooked, the bent.
You can keep your symmetry
and right angles.
I want the branches overflowing
into the street, roots cracking
the well-laid sidewalks,
the river bubbling
beyond its banks.
The road that veers off the grid,
the berries growing wild
at the edge of concrete.
The bamboo that takes over the woods,
fluorescent vines twining around trunks,
the dandelions, the wildflowers, the weeds.
The storm that comes unforecasted,
whipping rain over the trimmed lawns,
bringing up mud, tearing branches,
uprooting.
.
March Sunset
Fire-pink surrounds the orb,
lines of color stretch across the sky,
so geometrical, so clearly patterned—
orange, then magenta,
softening into lavender.
From this, take a lesson.
From this, absorb fire and softness.
May I soften as the hours extend away from crisis?
Can the tight ball of my heart heal and unwind,
unravel the forged layers into threads of lavender?
© Yvette Neisser
Yvette Neisser is the author of two poetry collections, Iron into Flower (2022) and Grip (2011 Gival Press Poetry Award). Her translations from Spanish include South Pole/Polo Sur by María Teresa Ogliastri and Difficult Beauty: Selected Poems by Luis Alberto Ambroggio. Founder of the DC-Area Literary Translators Network, she has taught writing at The George Washington University, The Writer’s Center, and elsewhere. She works in international development and resides in Silver Spring, MD.
The Loch Raven Review 