The following poem appears in our January 2015 digital issue. Read the rest of Joyce’s poem and the entire issue.
Say what you will, the dead disturb
our disbelief, open our books
and whistle across the hearth
those cold nights no fire can warm.
When she died, my mother’s heart
stilled against my palm, that last beat
shocked my hand and left me
burned beyond thought.
How the clock in my sister’s family room
stopped dead the moment our mother
expired twelve miles away.
Open the books, open the books!
—
JOYCE KORNBLATT is a novelist (NOTHING TO DO WITH LOVE, WHITE WATER, BREAKING BREAD and THE REASON FOR WINGS) and short-story writer. She also writes essays and reviews for Parabola Magazine and other journals.
For twenty years, she was Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Maryland in the United States. She now lives with her husband, meditation teacher Christopher McLean, in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, Australia.
This is a small representation of the high-quality writings you’ll find in every issue of TIFERET.
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