Three Poems by Barbara Blatner

living with earthquakes

when the personality suffers a certain level of stress
it always cracks along the same fault line, Freud said,
and it's true, always the same fissure, same
wasted geologic site, road or mountain signed with stones,
piercing sun, darkness-in-brightness that threatens
rituals of washing, walking, eating, speaking,
what magazine to read for an hour to unbind the day,
follow its white twine into bed where I seek "comfortable enough"
in the lie of pillows, then switch out the light, sweet accuracy,
sink into blind room, whittle breath in darkness
setting toward dream, another day ceded
above rock rising, plateau lifting, mind
coming through its glue

tune

whistle to
you
nipples
lips
there too
you put my
there
too
tongue on your
chest
I'm dog
mouse
in your house
undotted
where sanctuary
under
beings
go to
all over

tune near the end of 2003

say I'm moving
in my life half-drunk
with plan and regret
in circles, like a dog.
I want to lie down.

and world's
in the greatest mess,
barking and biting
everywhere,
everyone listening
hard, not long. and say

the old beauties--sun
on sky, river loping
toward ocean,
mostly quiet, are
loud to me
sometimes

About the author:
BARBARA BLATNER is a playwright, poet and composer. Her verse play for Epiphany, NO STAR SHINES SHARPER, was published by Baker's Plays in 1990, aired repeatedly on National Public Radio stations and acquired by New York's Museum of Television and Radio.

Barbara's chapbook of poems, THE POPE IN SPACE, was published by Intertext Press in 1986; poems, fiction and reviews have appeared in Poetry Northwest, The New York Quarterly, Lift, Apalachee Quarterly, 13th Moon, and others. She has poems recently appearing in Shampoo, Big Scream, House Organ, The Peppermint Pages and Heliotrope.
Ms. Blatner teaches at Yeshiva University. She received a Doctor of Arts in English from the State University of New York at Albany, an M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University, and a B.A. in Music from Vassar College.