Vox Populi
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Elizabeth Savage: Five Sijos
You Lost Me at “Sports Illustrated Cover”
Camp Cupcake showed you there is no sweet escape, no kitchen duty
for you, Martha. The master’s house looks great for its age. In one
piece or two, the spectacle has its day & eats you, too.
Daddy Lessons
His father’s death left a star-sized hole in Oklahoma. Alive,
mine is already all absence, out of breath with wishing to be
light like the deer he kills. Out of range, he seems small. Up close, smaller.
Keep Trying Not to Go Dark
As for this annual consideration of mothers,
by word of mouth, most fail—before, during, or after. Look
at Mary. She could have said no, you can’t have him. Let them burn.
Two Truths & a Lie
I slept deliberately in the Thoreau honeymoon suite.
Blood relations are as thick as the company they keep.
I’d rather be loved than respected, chosen than elected.
Coyotes & AI
Terrors come in small packages. Folktales no more dangerous
than dogs apart from the sound. What you can’t hear first could hurt you.
What they say you can’t take back, but you expected them to attack.
Editor’s note: Sijo is a Korean verse form related to haiku and tanka and comprised of three lines of 14-16 syllables each, for a total of 44-46 syllables. Each line contains a pause near the middle.
Author bio: Since 2008, Elizabeth Savage has served as the poetry editor for Kestrel: A Journal of Literature & Art. She is a utility infielder in the Humanities Department of Fairmont State University in Fairmont, West Virginia.
Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Savage
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Oooh, I love them all. And this, yes:
“Look
at Mary. She could have said no, you can’t have him. Let them burn.”
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Yes, all five of these sijos are perfect.
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Hello, Michael,
I posted this poem yesterday on FB, and I will take it down today. Would you like it for Vox Populi?
I love your publication and enjoy reading the poems you email me.
Thank you.
Pam Uschuk
WHICH DO YOU PREFER?
What’s the difference between those who prefer strawberry-colored tanagers to screech owls? Owls seldom eat tanagers, prefer kangaroo mice, but a tanager would never kill an owl unless contracted as an extra for a dystopic movie.
Some friends vastly prefer mating songs to bloody talons. But what about those turned on by drumming? Who feed the Gila woodpecker who wakes the hood, attacking metal roof vents with his bullet beak?
Neither owl nor tanager ever woke me from a nightmare of leading a covey of teary new orphans screaming from a volcano’s orange lava torching ferns inches from their small bare heels.
Some humans prefer solitude, others fall in love in dreams, to stroke lover cheeks with their long black curling tongues which both hummingbirds and bats can do. Would you rather kiss a violet hummer or a short-nosed bat?
Do I still have to chose between being a poet, oceanographer, musician or ornithologist the way I did in college where declaring a major was as final as ink leaked into a wound.
A Gemini I like to twin my options—own two houses, two dogs own me, catch a baseball with my right hand, swat a homerun with my left. On a hot day in August I lost two ovaries to cancer.
The binary ended when my surgeon sliced into my abdomen removing the singular— the gelatinous shield of my oumentum, cut out my uterus, my cervix, my appendix, and 4 signal lymph nodes resembling the great square of Pegasus, scrubbed disease from my one of a kind bladder and a length of large intestine, each of them connected by a fierce subway system of ovarian tumors singlemindedly swelling and multiplying faster than any choices, binary or not.
Pamela Uschuk April 18, 2024
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Hi Pam, I’ve written you a message on Facebook messenger. After you read it, let me know what you think, okay?
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Wow!
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Each one an enjoyable mouthful
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Oh yes. Well-said.
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Fine poems.
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Yes, they are little jewels.
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