Three poems by Joan Mazza
Strategies, On the Last Day of the Year, and Rave Rejections
Strategies
Leonie, a Zebra shark in an aquarium with no males
near has laid viable eggs without stored sperm.
They’ve hatched to normal pups. She’s switched
reproductive strategies to carry on her lineage
although without the elastic diversity all species
must employ for long-term survival. I take this
as an omen, advice for uncertain days ahead.
I ponder my back-up plans and question if I have
enough to keep me active, imagineering,
entertained for ten more years on home arrest,
captive of weather, waning strength, subject
of the King of Blurts and Bad Ideas. Without gas
stoves, electricity, refrigeration, peasants and serfs
endured to produce live children who lived
to do the same. Adapt or die. I seize whatever
small advantage, help, knowledge comes my way.
It’s not the strongest who survive, but those who save,
make do without waste, who change their usual M.O.
to leave offspring with those genes for flexibility.
Without children or a mate, I hang on alone.
Too old to clone or birth another generation,
I nurture tactics for leaving another kind of brood
in verse. I send them out like muscled children
who swear to make a more equal world. Not great,
but abundant, full, and just. No ribs showing.
*****
On the Last Day of the Year
Too tired to enumerate the crazy things
that happened this past year, too worn out
to read the lists on every blog or get a dog,
I try to plan ahead for a new year without
surprises like the track of more viruses,
civil war, or an attack that takes down
the world’s electric grid. What I need
is to change one thing in my daily writing
practice, one tactic that will enliven
poems dead on arrival, tasting like
boiled dirt, dull as Hallmark sentiments.
I read Marie Howe and Patricia Smith,
wade into waters too dark to see beneath
the surface. In last night’s dream I resolved
to break up with a man after eighteen months
of nothing much, sure we’d never be a team.
I take this message for the year to come.
Go deeper, teachers say, but don’t tell you
how it’s done. With old writing, I’ll go
full bore, find the original impetus rising
from my molten, churning core.
Don’t count this as a New Year’s resolution
or plans for revolution. Not tied in a ribboned
box, life is measured in folded socks.
*****
Rave Rejections
Now is the season when editors clear
their desks, send form rejections by email
to poets waiting for months to know if
their verses will travel into the world
like children holding hands on school outings.
The rejections come with apologies
for the long delay, and compliments
on poems they refused. We especially liked
“I take my grandmother to Wegmans”
and “Sestina for Despair.” Another notes,
"Medicine Bag" in particular caught
my attention for its details and obvious
connection to Native beliefs. Still, they’re not
accepted for publication. They don’t
say why or what they discern is missing,
wish me luck elsewhere, ask me to submit
again. I’m swimming in this mystery,
don’t know which way I’ll find land or where
the buoys are, or rocks where I can stand.
Some days I float and concentrate on clouds.
Others, I’m unbound. I drift face down
and hold my breath so I don’t drown.
About the poet:
Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and is the author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam). Her work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Prairie Schooner, The MacGuffin, Poet Lore, Slant, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia.