"Inherited Memory: Back from the Mikveh" & "Avalanche" by Laura C Lippman

INHERITED MEMORY: BACK FROM THE MIKVEH

Setting: penumbra of lamplight,

clothed in warm flannel,

back from the mikveh, 

my bleeding done.

You—always a stranger 

beside me—

a gentleman in front of others.

A monster with drink,

in bed a voracious animal

or an exhausted peasant.

And me, who am I?

A victim of the brutal night?

Or a stranger’s cruelty—?

A rapacious husband

who pretends passivity

during the day?

A bristle of beard on soft skin.

Can this be illuminated

in the melting darkness?

AVALANCHE

The cornice above the granite face

hovers a shiver from disaster.

A ski edge, a dog paw is all it needs

to release the suspended energy

of time’s snowy curtain.

Did the ravens and spiders who guard this kingdom 

abandon their vigil?

Does the snow misting behind the avalanche have memory?

Do I have to remind you, his mother expected him,

praising his prowess in the snow?

How quick a river can become a riptide, 

a wave a tsunami.

How the flesh compresses under the weight of ice—

how life is stilled.

The phone call in the night,

the answering machine message retrieved in the morning.

The mother’s voice;

My son, my only child; the dog in the snow,

distraught, searching.

The father gazing nightly thereafter into his blazing bonfires, 

a ticking timepiece, the forsaken dreams, 

superhero figures unearthed in the yard years later.

From where? All that remained.

Laura Celise Lippman’s work has appeared in Apricity Magazine, Avatar Review, Brief Wilderness, The Broken Plate, Chained Muse, Courtship of Winds, Crack the Spine, Crosswinds, El Portal, Evening Street Review, Flights, Glassworks Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Hey I’m Alive Magazine, La Presa, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Perceptions Magazine, Plainsongs, Pontoon Poetry, Poydras Review, Journal of Family Practice, The Meadow, Neologism Poetry Journal, New English Review, Red Ogre Review, Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders, Spotlong Review, Synkroniciti, and The Vashon Loop. She is a co-author of the book Writing While Masked, Reflections of 2020 and Beyond. She attended Bryn Mawr College and received her M.D. from the Medical College of Pennsylvania. She practiced medicine for thirty-seven years and raised two children in the Pacific Northwest. Since retirement, she continues to take poetry courses at Hugo House in Seattle. She enjoys the outdoors and sharing her wonder at the natural world.