After retiring from her law practice, Anita Pulier served as a U. S. representative for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom at the United Nations. Her chapbooks Perfect Diet and The Lovely Mundane were published by Finishing Line Press. Anita’s poems have appeared both online and in print in many journals, including Riverbabble, Fjords, Evening Street Review, Cultural Weekly, LA Times, Askew, Linnet’s Wings, Oberon, Avalon Literary Review, Extracts Daily Dose of Lit and The Buddist Poetry Review. Anita’s work is included in the forthcoming anthology Grabbing The Apple. Anita and her husband split their time between Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Los Angeles.
*****
Knit One Purl Two
For Sima
You get a call
your brother died.
You retreat, bury yourself
under the fluff of blankets, sheets,
he stays dead.
Tears coat your aging skin,
still dead.
You begin telling
family, friends, co-workers.
They wait for you to orchestrate what’s next,
what follows dead.
You need time.
Knit one, purl two,
maybe he will walk through that door once more
so you can be five or ten or twelve or fifteen
gifting a scarf you made for him before he
left home leaving you behind,
knit one, purl two,
where you held close the feeling
that as long as he was somewhere, you were okay.
Now, this very minute,
you need him to be somewhere.
(cable stitch, twist stitch)
Instead, he is dead,
You have lost count,
loose strands appear,
you pull on one
everything unravels.
You crawl out of bed
gripping a single ropey thread.
Children, grandchildren, friends call,
show up, make noise.
The thread is surprisingly elastic.
You wrap it tightly around your hand,
your head, your spine, it moves easily
with you from bed to kitchen,
keeps you upright,
redefines survival,
you drink juice.
***
Sounds of Morning
Sleep has infused
his brain with energy
transformed into words.
I watch his mouth moving,
his disheveled silvery hair,
his familiar far away look.
I try to stay focused
while he lectures
on theories of black holes,
the ninth planet,
evolutionary development,
how the brain works,
religion, politics,
and ultimately,
solutions, not always pretty.
Squinting in the pale light
of early morning
I silently review our numbers,
years behind,
years ahead.
Our feet touch,
rustle the sheets
as he decodes
the puzzle
of the very earth
I simply tread upon.
I used to wonder why
he shares these
early morning rambles with
a woman who hasn’t
read a science book since 6th grade
until one morning
he pauses and says, Say something.
I raise my eyebrows, ask, Why?
I like hearing your voice, he says tenderly.
***
Boulevard 3-5947
I am trying to reach Dad.
This is not woowoo
I need to talk to him
things are tough here
Unconditional love is hard to find
I keep dialing his number
he doesn’t answer
Oh, I wonder if it’s because
I am using an old clamshell phone
like the one we bought him after Mom died
which he never could fathom
I rummage through my purse and
pull out my iPhone 6
Dad’s number is not in Favorites, not in Contacts
But before I can add that obsolete number
(ingrained in my brain since childhood) the
early morning light bounces off my bedroom
walls offering this fatherless aging daughter
a stark lesson in endurance.
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