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TVBC
DEANNA PICKARD has published two collections of poetry, Lose
Them If You Can (The Vincent Brothers Company, 2003) and
In Dreams We Kiss Ourselves Good-Bye (Luquer Street
Press, 2003).
Deanna Pickard’s poetry has appeared in Antioch Review,
Blue Unicorn, Chelsea,
Cincinnati Review, The Comstock Review, Crazyhorse,
Denver Quarterly, New England Review, The New
Republic, Nimrod Awards Issue XIII, Passages North,
Poetry, River Styx, Poetry Northwest, Southern
Poetry Review, The Vincent Brothers Review, Witness,
and Zone 3—Rainmaker Awards Issue, among other fine
literary journals.
Her poems have appeared in the anthologies O
Taste and See: Food Poems (Bottom Dog Press, 2003) and I
Have My Own Song For It: Modern Poems about Ohio (University
of Akron Press, 2002), which featured “Not Poor,” reprinted below. Her poetry has won many contests, including the
2004 Paul Laurence Dunbar Poetry Prize, The Chester H. Jones
National Poetry Competition, The Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize,
and 2003 The Literary Library Contest in Dayton, Ohio.
She has received two Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio
Arts Council, and two
Individual Artist Fellowships from the Montgomery County Arts
and Cultural District. In
2003, Ms. Pickard was named Ohio Poet of the Year by the Ohio
Poetry Association.
What the
Birds Know
/
Deanna Pickard
—For Diana
If a bird flies into the house, or taps at
a window,
it is a bad omen auguring death
within
the year to someone living in the house.
—Polish Superstition
All that summer, birds built nests
in the spouting, the
chimney. They battered their wings
against the windows, ignoring the drama in the orchard,
apples fermenting,
jeweled with flies.
You lived alone in the country,
unafraid of barn-thieving winds, trucks turning around
in your lane at night.
Only the birds knew the unnerved you,
gave you bad dreams. You
knew the superstition.
We brewed healing teas, wished
on dying stars, stood in the high window and watched
pale butterflies swim through blankets of fog.
You gave in under a liar’s moon, moved back to town
but something followed.
A sparrow
flew into the house one day, threaded death
with its bruised wings. Your
grown son chased it
with a broom but you knew it was too late.
—From Lose Them If You Can (The
Vincent
Brothers Company, 2003)
Labor
Day
/ Deanna Pickard
For my father
Today, more than any other, I
think how
I never pull weeds, plant peonies, or
dust your marker on your birthday.
Nor do I take Peace roses,
your favorite,
to your grave in bouquets. Instead
the pale
yellows edged with pink are offered up
on my kitchen table.
Fragrant blooms
luxuriating, a trucker’s ideal supper
of steak and potatoes, simple stalks of celery
and green onions arranged in
water glasses—
for you, who practiced the art of frugal balance,
and cleaned your plate with a piece of bread.
—From Lose Them If You Can (The
Vincent
Brothers Company, 2003)
Not
Poor / Deanna Pickard
Cicadas are squeaking like
loose wheels
on a buggy even he can hear. He tells
of their mating weeks that must last
for seventeen years. And another summer
story of locusts, when farm wives
battled with useless
aprons
while the corn turned to widow’s lace
and their men were hard pressed
not to fold. The children, too, knew
nights would come to whiskeyed words,
as mothers blinked back
the beaten
silences. Another truck would carry them
to another place. Thoughts of no gifts,
not even hardtack or used shoes next winter,
would hover overhead like buzzards
but since lightning bugs
were torching
the trees, the heaviness in the house
would allow them to sneak out to collect
the free jewelry of those Ohio nights.
—TVBR Issue #1: Vol.
VII, No. 1
Lost
in Dark County—Greenville, Ohio /
Deanna Pickard
Think of it. The
deliberate
absence of trees, then acres
of corn, or the surprise
of a cemetery or a barn
held together by sweat
and sharp tin roof.
Out here, even the stars
are plowed into fields,
a patch of earth worried
by wives and widows. Now
a flattened island races by
or one string of trees
like children holding hands
single file, waiting,
or a scrap bush, lonely
like the solitary watching
of a scarecrow. Finally pines
huddle toward a pilgrim house.
A double thread of tracks
winding closer to the whining
rhythm of a country song.
City girl, where are you?
Lover of nature and clutter,
half of you wanting to be part
of this place, the other half
fearing it like burial.
—TVBR Issue #1: Vol.
VII,
No. 1
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