Alison Luterman is Ephemera's September Poet

(4 Poems & More)

Welcome readers!

We’re happy to introduce Alison Luterman, our selection for September’s Poetry at Ephemera. Thanks to Alison and everyone who submitted! If you’d like to participate, we will be fielding submissions each month to publish one poem per issue from the same poet for the month. Each poet receives a $200 honorarium. For full rules and more info please see our designated post about Poetry at Ephemera. You can also submit via the button:

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Introducing, Alison Luterman!

Writer Bio

Alison Luterman's four books of poems include The Largest Possible Life; See How We Almost Fly; Desire Zoo; and In the Time of Great Fires. She has published poems in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, Rattle, The Atlanta Review, and many other journals and anthologies.  Two of her poems are included in Billy Collins' Poetry 180 project at the Library of Congress.  Five of her personal essays have been collected in the e-book Feral City, published at www.shebooks.net and available on audible.com. She has also written half a dozen plays, including several musicals. She has taught and/or been poet-in-residence at California Poets in the Schools, New College in San Francisco, Holy Names College in Oakland, The Writing Salon in Berkeley, at Esalen and Omega Institutes, at the Great Mother and New Father Conference, and at various writing retreats, workshops and conferences all over the country.  Check out her website www.alisonluterman.net for more information.

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Artist Statement

My poetry tends to be about the heroic nature of ordinary life. For the last few years I have been obsessed with singing, iconic female singers, and the power of women's voices. I've been using poetry to track my own forays into singing, and to honor the great singers of our time. But I'm still also writing about cooking, my urban neighborhood, what it's like to be alive during the decline of the American empire, and all the other stuff that makes up daily life in the U.S. in the early decades of the 21st century.

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Poems

Each issue of Ephemera spanning September will feature one poem from Alison Luterman. After each issue drops, the poem from that issue will then appear here as well. This post will remain on our Substack, free to view, for the year.

Poem 1 of 4

Biscuits

Husband's got a cold, so I make him biscuits--
flour, buttermilk, salt, and he thanks me
over and over. It's so easy
to make him happy. My friends and I used to joke
about men, that they don't need much, just food
and sex, whereas we complicated creatures...
I even had a therapist tell me as much, saying
"Women are always wondering
what men are thinking--it's a waste
of your time! They're not." The onion
when peeled, is just another
dumb white bulb, in other words. But I have known
a little something of a male mind, 
its incurable loneliness, its ghosts and fears.
We just can't see into each other's abysses
so it's easier to pretend they're not there. Still,
on this winter afternoon the smell
of risen biscuits fills the house,
and I find myself simply happy
to be animal, mated with another
of my species, living side by side
with this strange creature, the long
flannel-shirted length of him, his fingers
on the piano weaving harmonies
that shouldn't work together but do,
his book splayed open on the coffee table,
lost reading glasses roosting on top of his head.

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Poem 2 of 4

Blues for Billie

You can pick apart the flower and never find its scent--
Tear all the petals off the flower,
Tell me where that magic went.

Elegant as satin, intimate as breath,
My voice wraiths up like smoke rings
Around a slender branch,

And then my vibrato blossoms,
you can hear it float
and gather; hear the tease, the coax

of it--something lightning-struck,
or maybe I just don't give a fuck--
no, it's something tremulous that wants to live.

It draws you closer. It draws you in
It says See what they did
to this beauty--

blood in every note,
and blood at the root.
You can hear it rising from the hospital bed

where they've chained me by a slender foot.

Poem 3 of 4

Dear Monster

                                                                                                                                           
When Maria Callas does the aria
from Norma, “Casta Diva,”
she stands still as a willow tree for long moments
through the overture, arms wrapped
around her newly-slender body,
jewels trembling at wrists and throat.
Then smiles demurely as the orchestra swells,
her long almond eyes uptilted,
as if she held a beautiful secret close.
Watch how she waits. Like an animal
who hides her claws for the pounce.
Then when that voice finally comes on
in sinuous waves, its amber beauty
is almost unbearable, but she bears it,
she births it through her wide, avid mouth
which is shaped like the prow of the Argo
carrying Jason and his men away
after they’d stolen the golden fleece.
Oh mouth of Callas, dazzling orifice,
pouring out glory and rue in sonorous round notes!
Oh lonely workhorse, exile
on the island of fame, who gave everything for Art
and like Medea, trusted faithless men,
only to be abandoned in the end.
Haven't we all heard the myths and shuddered,
seeing ourselves in the enraged outcast who transformed herself
through sheer force of will,
but even that was not enough.
Art is art. Love is love.
Dear monster, dear sister, I have been lonely too.
But no one has been quite as lonely as you.

Poem 4 of 4

Caught

All night I writhed like a fish on a hook:
I have to get a job, a real job
with health insurance, and when did I get so old,
who will catch me when I fall?
At six, a pink glow cracked 
the darkness. On the horizon
symphonic notes of rose-gold 
opened the show, beginning with indigo oboe notes
which lightened to bruise-violet clarinets
until finally the violins came in, all pink-peach-coral.
Honestly it was almost too much;
if God were a painting student 
and I the instructor, I’d have told Her
to dial it back a little, not be so over-the-top,
but then I couldn't help myself;
the clamorous colors dragged me onto the sidewalk,
shoelaces half-undone, as a murmuration of starlings
wheeled overhead. Something made me
open my arms to them, just as I saw the old Vietnamese woman
in her conical hat, rummaging in the recycling,
because you can't eat beauty, no matter how rich,
although I could also see that she, like me,
like everyone, is caught
in its net, held there no matter what,
in radiant strands of streaming light.