Christine Bloom is a writer of fiction and poetry. Her poems have appeared in the Midwest Literary Magazine and The Ghazal Page. She has received an honorable mention for a short story in the Glimmer Train, November 2009, competition for new writers. She studies creative writing in the UCLA writer's program and is working on a novel. She is a member of PEN, Writer's Village University, and Romance Writer's of America.
Summer 2011
Table of Contents - Vol. VII, No. 2
Poetry Fiction Translations Reviews
Christine Bloom
A Ghazal Sequence: In Memoriam
I
Backwards, we travel, down the narrow streets of time.
We search for
windows into the meanings of our lives.
Somewhere, in between the
idle thrum of bumblebees,
I remember a whisper of a kiss brush my lips.
Sifting loose soil through my fingers, I plant a lily,
a bright
spot, stark against the dark earth.
In the garden, bold blue jays
dart, white-throated quail strut.
From a sunny window, we smile and press
our foreheads to the glass.
The life we lived drifts into my
dreams.
The warmth of your body lies beside mine.
II
I am
blind to trees green with leaves.
Deaf to chattering birds, rustling
branches.
Light reflects off the windows of our empty house,
Shadows flicker along the wall where we embraced.
I wear your jacket
lost in your scent.
Cherry tobacco and a pipe buried in the pockets.
I yearn for the squeak of your shoes on the path.
Your jangling keys
and pocket change are my music.
In my dreams we nap in the garden
swing,
tend beds of roses, dance in the rain.
Tasting Salt
A Quatrina
We dive
into waves, swim past seals
whose bodies glisten on rocky ledges,
float on our backs until fingertips touch.
Wings of pelicans curve
overhead. Salt
coats our lips, leaves a soft powder of salt
on
our skin. Gulls clamor in blue skies, seals
bark diving from rocks. Our
bodies touch
when we climb cliffs to a ledge.
We hold onto slim
slate ledges,
ocean spray washes us with salty
mist. In the last rays
of the sun, seals
paddle to shore to rest, muzzles touch.
My head
lies on your shoulder, we touch
our lips to taste the ocean’s salt
in
our kisses. We press our bodies into the ledge.
A tangle of arms and legs
forms a seal.
Seals slip from their rocky ledges.
Our hands
touch. We sip salt from our skin.
The Visit
An Etheree
The
smallest
flowers bloom
near her gravestone.
Worn hands smooth the
dust
from the letters that spell
her name carved in grey granite.
A
cloudy frame fixed in the stone,
a small face, dark hair, communion veil,
tiny hands hold a small white prayer book.
© Christine Bloom
