Three Poems by Molly Kirschner

Three Poems: Molly Kirschner

Virga

Let’s see if I can find us some jobs, the young man says to the old one, leafing through the paper. They’re looking for a priest. I laugh from the next table over— an admission I’ve been listening. Now the young one speaks louder for my sake, describes a Gurdjieff class in which students go around in character for a week to cure themselves of rigid attachment to identity. One man, cast as the village idiot, was told to drool on himself in public. Suddenly, no one looked at him! He was free of his self-doubt! I, for one,

am embarrassed to be seen with myself whenever God comes into view. I go through my mind as through a bag of second-hand clothes, knowing

soon I’ll pass it on. We’re meant to spread out like heat—so quick to give itself away to any cold thing. I can name so many cold things. Government bills killing healthcare.

Frat boys half naked on the corner of Pearl and No Prospect Street ogling their phones.

My brother has a job walking a racist dog.

Go ahead, ask me about hope. Once, in Santa Fe, I saw rain change its mind and evaporate halfway to land. (I didn’t say I understood. I said I saw.)

And once, I thought I would die of anger. An angel came and played me a clip of a secret film. Reader, I refer you to the stars or the g r ass if you prefer. Why on this wide earth, walk as though on a tightrope?

Members of the Bridge

Wrong address. Another woman’s loneliness. I forget which way I came from. The only thing to do is bow to the captive algae in the lichen which may be digested if the fungus gets desperate. The tick in my bed I stabbed to death with a pencil. The carpenter ants I starved. The man on whom I wrought such a vengeance with pictures of squirrels. We are peace-loving people with violent souls. We lose hide and seek like bright birds on green, on purpose. Such is our need to be seen. Can I see you, Reader? I can’t. So let me tell you a story. In Sri Lanka, a monk has a great idea. To eradicate the ants from the temple, he fills a bowl with water, sticks a honey jar in the center. The bugs were supposed to perish in the pilgrimage. Instead they built a bridge, took turns serving as members of the bridge, turns running to the honey.

Another Comfort

I. With the abandon of dandelions, that’s how I long to fill fields and ruin lawns. Watch these flowers, I tell the neighborhood children. They will change.

II. What other comfort is there?

III.

There’s a swastika etched in the bus stop window. K attacks it with his umbrella. Don’t worry. The lines are all squiggled the wrong way.

And when he feels he’s on the wrong end of the rain I reassure him: Life is a kind of business trip

IV. I’m in a hurry. An 11-year-old hands me a stick begging me to write in the dirt: if the world.

They are learning English, these children from Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia.

K and I play their games. We don’t understand the rules.

V.

Another comfort:

A bubble alights on a blade of grass. A little girl kisses it out of existence.