Poetry by Eve Rifkah

                        Matt Niemi CC



Words are Made of Memory
        for Jeanette

The words like rain through a grate.
one by one      memories dissolve
diary pages become blank.

She brushes her daughter’s hair in peripheral memory
while daughter now middle-aged 
changes a dressing          offers food.

Marbles saved from childhood
roll away under bureaus,
beds, tables, underfoot.

She picks one up               aggie 
or clay           cat’s eye
remembers a son.

How did he go?
Then another.     
There were three.

Now the one left 
calls every week 
talks from far away.

​


​Retreat 

A black hole of a crow
             rag in the field
caws cut air           
        
wrapped and unwrapped  
                branches           leaves
             all a tussle           talk in rushes
voices                  un tuned
                   un voweled  un concordanced     
         
caws without meaning  
                  without cost
 where do I go
                       from here

from white plastic chair
               walk uneven       around
garden        barn
             up and down
rain                                                    drop
                     another
and gone


                                in the rush of air
 rush here                            and there
                carried                pushed
spun      winged skirt tatters 

no lift         
                no rise
                               no fly away

​

Eve Rifkah was co-founder of Poetry Oasis, Inc. (1998-2012), a non-profit poetry association dedicated to education and promoting local poets. Founder and editor of DINER, a literary magazine with a 7-year run. MFA Vermont College. She is author of “Dear Suzanne” (WordTech Communications, 2010) and “Outcasts    the Penikese Leper Hospital 1905-1921” (Little Pear Press, 2010). Chapbook “Scar Tissue”, (Finishing Line Press, 2017),  “At the Leprosarium” 2003 winner of the Revelever Chapbook Contest.