Three Days After

• Title – Three Days After

• Author – Amanda Barusch

• Genre – Poetry

• Type – Poem

• Publication Date – 2015

• Publisher – The Legendary, Issue 66

• Medium – Magazine

• Available at – The Legendary (USA, defunct)

• Source Text:

  Three Days After

  I saw a chameleon fish mimic the colors and patterns of its surroundings so perfectly that only his twitching nose gave him away. No. Wait. It must have been a puppy, his twitching black nose the only clue he wasn’t a fish. Please forgive me, I am not myself. I keep thinking of water. My father was a sailor. With his hair tied back he could shoot the sun and take us to paradise. He threw a hook off the stern and fed us rainbow fish for dinner. He never did like dogs.

  “Bastante!” he yelled, “Enough!” when he’d had it. And when we fretted he said, “At ease, at ease,” and asked our mother, “Should we give them postre now?” It didn’t take us long to learn it meant dessert, or how to spell i-c-e-c-r-e-a-m. Please, I’d like more postre now. In that place they never gave him ice cream. I used to sneak it in. Chocolate, and he ate it with his fingers. Once I asked how he was, and Dad said, “Fit and ready for duty, sir!” Then he pointed at my step mother and said, “You know, I was once married to a woman with the same name as that one. Only the other one was much nicer.”

  I fell from a great height and was caught in a sling. A meadowlark sang, and the air rushed cool against my face. No. Wait. It must have been a raptor’s cry. Yes, a red tailed hawk dove past the naked tree where sparrows perched, waiting to tease her. My mother flew to Hawaii on one of the first Pan Am airplanes. It took a long time and she met a handsome man who was not my father.

  When I told my brother, he reminded me how after her shower, our mother puffed talcum powder all over herself. What a strange thing to remember when someone tells you your father is dead. She taught me to call chickens, a skill reserved for the women in our family.

• Audio

Sometimes Found by Night

• Title – Sometimes Found by Night

• Author – Amanda Barusch

• Genre – Poetry

• Type – Poem

• Publication Date – 2015

• Publisher – The Legendary, Issue 66

• Medium – Magazine

• Available at – The Legendary (USA, defunct)

• Source Text:

  Sometimes Found by Night

  Paris, 1947

  He, too, was struck by the pervasive scent
  of onions and the ghastly cost of the war.

  They danced in a discothèque
  while deer strolled through the woods.

  He watched her drink coffee
  with a sugar cube between her teeth.

  He invited her for a walk, and she cried
  Stop! But it was only a seagull.
  Not a cockatoo.

  They enjoyed eavesdropping in cafes.
  Once, on the street, he heard a soldier ask,

  What day is this? And
  she replied, I don’t know. I don’t live here.

  He worried that she might find him dull,
  she had, after all, no gift for opera.

  She said he swallowed loudly.
  But not all the time.

  There was a certain comfort.

  Later, he would ask his bride,
  Why hyacinths? And
  she would reply, Because marigolds smell like dying bees.

• Audio

Barefoot Desert

• Title – Barefoot Desert

• Author – Amanda Barusch

• Genre – Poetry

• Type – Poem

• Publication Date – October 16, 2014

• Publisher – Stone Path Review (UK)

• Medium – Magazine

• Available at – Stone Path Review (via MagCloud)

• Link – https://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/823370?__r=322616

• PDF – Stone Path Review Fall 2014

• Source Text:

  Barefoot Desert

  Morning clouds flame but the cold hills

  insist on shadow. Faces of indigo stone

  clutch the snow in their creases. A child’s feet could still

  warm the earth, wake the meadow, and know

  the path of each skylit memory. Instead, she will

  tiptoe away from the dark mountain frown

  to dance barefoot in the desert sun

  and share honey dates with a black-necked swan.

• Audio

Awake

• Title – Awake

• Author – Amanda Barusch

• Genre – Poetry

• Type – Poem

• Publication Date – October 16, 2014

• Publisher – Stone Path Review (UK)

• Medium – Magazine

• Available at – Stone Path Review (via MagCloud)

• Link – https://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/823370?__r=322616

• PDF – Stone Path Review Fall 2014

• Source Text:

  Awake

  Winter sunrise kindles a tender
  mist as the bell bird call
  punctures
  your dreamscape.
  A breeze promises coffee and toast
  but
  your smoky hair and goose down
  still hold the night’s heat.
  And the curtains whisper,
  “Not yet!”

• Audio

My Clan

• Title – My Clan

• Author – Amanda Barusch

• Genre – Poetry

• Type – Poem

• Publication Date – August 6, 2014

• Publisher – Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, Issue 122. (Anthologized in 2014 Crack the Spine Edition and 2015 Edition of Utah Sings) (USA)

• Medium – Magazine

• Available at – Crack the Spine Literary Magazine (via ISSUU)

• Link – https://issuu.com/crackthespine/docs/issue_122

• PDF – My Clan

• Source Text:

  My Clan

  In my clan the babies ride horses,
  snug between saddle and womb,
  manes flying loose in the coarse

  sea breeze. We fall. We lick our wounds.
  We tumble, again.
  Women shriek and beat the drums

  as echoes wash over. The men,
  starved and impatient, die young.
  But we know where to go when

  the wind shifts. We know which vein
  to tap. We know when the hawk descends
  on a twisted course, and the red pine

  bends to earth, that silence is at hand.
  Stars glare down on thin clouds and drifting sand.

• Audio