Poetry by Nancy Sobanik

       Ib Aarmo CC




A Difficult Year

Because we endured winter’s long walk,
that relentless slog, just to reach April snow

Because a frost heave caused a buckle
and the truck dropped a wheel in a pothole

Because we veered into the ditch and snapped
the axle, the same day your 90 year old father fell,

his vertebrae crumbling like breadsticks at the bottom 
of a sack, before we carried him from floor to car

Because though the surgeon screwed and cemented
for hours, he remained bent and three inches shorter 

Because May’s apple tree blossoms withered
and browned, hard bitten by a late frost,

much like the snapped branch of first love 
that left our young adult child unable 

to eat, sleep, or imagine a world with that gap,
that the greening of spring would return 

Because still, soon after, we saw a swell--
the roseate unblemished skin of an infant
 
fruit perched on the tip of its pedicel,
and though by October it had grown small,

as frost is known to stunt the tree,  
an apple nestled fully formed in our palm, 

and the flesh crunched and tasted sweet
just the same, and left a keen craving

Because despite all that, we almost filled our bushel
while a mix of sour and sweet tanged the autumn air





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Room of Mirrors

I am five, my eye billows, 
a purple bloom. 

My mother says “he loves you, 
he just can’t love himself”. 

I think I am something broken 
off, like a branch from its tree.

His own father threw glass words. 
Gut-eating cancer took him, 

left only a picture in a frame.    
The next day at school I tell

the teacher I jumped and fell 
onto a bedpost. No questions.

A mouth becomes a mirror.
Each mirror wants to replicate. 

An arm becomes a wing to cover 
the face. I learn to regurgitate.

I am surrounded by mirrors.
His hand carries a cracked 

can of sorrows to his mouth, 
pours it down the hole.

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Nancy Sobanik is a poet whose work can be found upcoming in Frost Meadow Review, Vol. 12, Triggerfish Critical Review; Sparks of Calliope- Best of The Net Nominee 2023 and Pushcart Nomination 2024; Verse-Virtual; Sheila-Na-Gig; The Ekphrastic Review and One Art. She was awarded second place in the Belfast Maine Postmark Poetry Festival Contest 2023, and third place in 2024. She is working on a debut collection, and lives and plays in Maine. 
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