Poetry: Selections from Carol Graser

Root Canal

Outside the dentist’s building

an audacious dance of tree

 

A pine, black with rain and

hand splays of long yellow needles

 

I am going to the chair

and this tree stands posed

 

muscles flexed and holding

This tree won’t come inside

 

stand behind the dentist

peering in at my teeth

 

and wink at me. All the trees

have better things to do

 

I’m sitting in her branches

now, telling you this

That Winter

After the long snowmelt

the ground froze and we walked

over the brown grass like

cement, unforgiving

 

and the moon rose like

a full radiant pearl

that melted nothing. We sat

all in our separate chairs

 

and told our disparate

stories. The wind repeated

herself: cold & cold

& cold & cold. We blinked

 

against frosted cheeks. Some

of us knew the story

that would call a softer

wind. They were still cradling

 

its newness. They were still  

nursing its hunger. What could

we do but wait, let our breath

warm our frigid fingers

 

Carol Graser’s work has been published or is forthcoming in many journals, including Apricity Magazine, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Evening Street Review, Hollins Critic, I-70 Review, The MacGuffin, Midwifery Today, So to Speak, Southern Poetry Review, and Home Planet News. Her collection, The Wild Twist of Their Stems, was published by FootHills Publishing in 2007. Since 2003, she’s run the monthly poetry series at the legendary Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, NY and has performed her work at various events and venues around New York State.