Ars Poetica as Lost Mother; Ghazal of Red Strings; Appointment by Jamie Wendt

Ars Poetica as Lost Mother

Dust particles float upward, balloon in the morning light
of unclean windows. Living room air flowered, a palace
of kneeling and toying, building a tent out of pillows.

When we put our hands on our children’s heads
to bless them on Shabbat, flavors of an ancient kitchen
swell in my eyes, the dishwasher moans, pages remain unread,

tears fall like miracles. Time moves like memory and I remember
the month of waiting when I was not pregnant,
the Jewish art fair full of children, bright and colorful

handmade kippot on their heads. My son buries his face into my neck
every morning. Because we keep the blinds closed, we missed the nest
of eggs and didn’t know about the bird babies until after they hatched.

How many miracles are right in front of us?
The pot of water again boils noodles, and my hands hold water
at the lake and the water is filled with our children. Even if I drink

a gallon a day, I still place words parched and unsaid
on the end-table. I thirst for them nightly
but never utter a word.

Ghazal of Red Strings

Fear and superstition lie deep within the color red.
Women were placed in the secluded, barren tent: “Red.”

A female space guided by moon and menstruation, the tent
was for resting in piles of hay and warm feathers odorous red.

The first gift my mother gave to me as her newly pregnant
daughter was spiritual bracelets: Kabbalistic red.

This is your protection: two string bracelets where the evil eye rotates
1) on my wrist, 2) clasped around a crib slat, a little touch of red.

The pending, unused crib will be safe to exist this way
behind a closed door, speck of light, untouched, ready, and red.

The nursery walls are mural painted: tree of life, birds of varying hues.
The crib is pressed under the tree, and in the corner, the string pops red.

We check daily. Crack open the door. Hold our breaths. Wait.
In the Old City market, women sell evil eyes on strings bright red.

Bracelets for five shekels, a tourist gift, a donation to the homeless.
Behind them, women read from a Torah scroll, tongues hot, red.

Men scream, hurl curses over the barrier in defense of power.
Streaks of lamb blood saved our ancestors, their doorways red.

I recite Birkat Yeladim. But it is false that I can protect my children.
There are noises in the night, my eyes sleepless and red.

The babies – Miriam and Gabriel – prophetess and angel, smile while dreaming.
I watch them, check on them, their faces pink, healthy, red.

Appointment

Remind me of the number of times
you have been pregnant, the first date

of your last period, the last time you slept
through the night, and woke up

happy. The voice on the other end persists
in its eager intrusiveness to determine a cause. Carving out

my sanity, I tally nights when I fall asleep
easy, when I don’t worry about the rising blood pressure

of my child. My ghosts were on the roof again last night.
A red siren intensified as a fire truck ambles down

Halsted at 3am, when I wondered how necessary the wail
really was, how much traffic out there

needed to move to the side at that hour.
Every now and then, I still see a woman wearing a pink knit hat

like a sticker of amplified memory and suffocation.
There are still men who roll down windows

of red pickup trucks in the suburbs to yell American profanities.
Which is to say that I do not believe

any man understands the archive of dark echoes,
the heartbeat of a fragile fetus defying its odds.

I lie down in stirrups annually now and lie about how I feel.
How quick it is, I realize, to say I am not depressed.

How much longer I imagine the appointment
would take if I answered yes. And where

would they take me?
The Great Lakes touch eight states and Canada

and when I look out into Lake Michigan at the end of my city,
I am absorbed by the overturning waters,

the drowning out of womb and voice
into the screaming silence of survival.

Jamie Wendt is the author of the poetry collection Fruit of the Earth (Main Street Rag, 2018), which won the 2019 National Federation of Press Women Book Award in Poetry. Her second collection, Laughing in Yiddish, is forthcoming in 2025 by Broadstone Books and was a finalist for the 2022 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry. Her poems, book reviews, and essays have been published in various literary journals and anthologies, including Feminine Rising, Green Mountains Review, Lilith, Jet Fuel Review, the Forward, Mom Egg Review, Poetica Magazine, Catamaran, and others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska Omaha. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two kids. jamie-wendt.com