Marsha Staiger and Ashley Seitz Kramer
Graft
By Marsha Staiger
Response to Ashley Seitz Kramer’s poem (below)
IN THE GARDEN: A STORM
By Ashley Seitz Kramer
I warmed the Nagano bulbs in my palm.
I asked each one to live deep and grow tall.
My hands were in the dirt, my fingers finding roots,
my sweat the rain we’d needed for weeks.
And when my knees were tender from kneeling,
my chest so close to the spade, the lightning seized me.
My ribs were lit. My hair was not streaked white
but my voice fluttered from me, a wounded bluejay;
I planted it too in the earth.
Later, I sang in the shower and woke my wife.
My students marked the chalkboard; their equations
made me shaky. Can you use a toaster? they asked.
Can you play tricks with the light switch? You’re unpredictable,
even sitting in a chair! I began to dream about the cooler waters,
my grandma baking lemon squares, my father’s red truck
catching fire on a midnight drive. I saw a garden, mine,
and walked its rows of tulips. I saw the sun—orange.
Someone’s mother’s favorite scarf. I saw a scarf—soft
to the touch. My wife’s pale and starry stomach.
I saw my tulips and their faces opened.
How and when do we divide by one?
I cut them at the stem.
I kept them on my desk.
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Linden
By Marsha Staiger
Inspiration Piece provided to Ashley Seitz Kramer
Spacing Effect
By Ashley Seitz Kramer
Response to Marsha Staiger’s painting (above)
Your shadow stretches for the stonemason’s yard.
The room closes in one twitch at a time,
slip-and-stall of conversation. Let me explain
my sense of history: I swallow novels & daily
correspond with the patron saint of self-
consciousness. I dream of deep snow
& clear a path for deliveries & wait.
In the dairy aisle I count cartoon cows.
I know by her exhaustion when my mother
has been to the coast & back. She touches
the water with her gloves on. I lotion up
on the hour & divide the teas & contemplate
peregrination. In this way, I am organized.
I sleep near a shark’s tooth. I keep the wind
in my bluest things. I am hungry & live
on the quarter notes soaring up & up
from the aviaries of Euclid’s abandoned
buildings. I cough the evening fog & pray
near the eastern window as it shudders for
the train & its roar. Dangerous is the morning’s
work & difficult. A woman feels herself forget.
