Two Poems by Dr. Tara Zafft
"Bushwick" and "Mandolin"
Bushwick
It’s already August, still sticky
hot. I lie on beige sheets,
wide window welcoming
a breath, maybe two. Arguments
in languages I don’t understand
wafting up from below
along with freshly baked baguette.
Bakers awake, like me. I wait
with a sliver of the moon for
late-night bar-goers, youth hostel
stragglers to find their way
to dreams. So I
can find a quiet piece of sky.
Solace of darkness before
day—the in-between hour
before streetsweepers and taxis
before the old man who runs
the parking lot across the street
screams at trucks blocking
the entrance, before babies
in stroller and scooters and dog
walkers—awaken before drama
like yesterday’s naked lady,
who carried her dress and a liter of coke
who spat at a policeman who
shielded his eyes, while she
waved her arms and gulped her coke
and walked barefoot into the day.
Mandolin Thick with quiet and hunger, the morning and I the call to prayer, and the woosh of salty sea air through open windows, reminds. Today I feel the ache of not being from here. Of wishing to be—of somewhere, today my bones want the hum of Grama Lil’s mandolin, a knowingness older even than her. And the melodies her untaught fingers played by heart. Grandpa dancing on banjo strings, Aunt Dana yodeling, Uncle Mickey on that old scratched guitar handed down from someone, and so many faces I did not know. Strays, my mama called them. Who’d play for food and beer. Into the night in that big old kitchen, the only room I remember. I see it yellow, thick with fried chicken, peppery mashed potatoes and stale beer piling up in the white plastic trash cans. And cigarettes. I see a circle of elbows bumping up against one another. Most of them. Gone, by way of the words they sang. Melodies I carried, melodies I disowned. Melodies now, in the silence of the desert I seek. The twang, the trippiness of Grandma’s mandolin. Songs memorized by blood, by bones.
From the author: I am most recently the winner of the Moonlit Getaway Poetry Prize. I have published in the anthology, Rumors Secrets and Lies, Poems about Abortion, Pregnancy and Choice, Write-Haus, Aether Avenue Press, The San Diego Poetry Annual, Vita and the Woolf Literary Journal, and Dumbo Press. I received a BA in Russian Literature from UC San Diego and Ph.D. in Modern Languages from the University of Bath, UK. In addition, I regularly teach poetry workshops.