Bio: Born & raised in New York City, Strongin now lives in British Columbia Canada. She has twelve books out and her first full-length book of poems in three decades Rembrandt's Smock will be published by Plain View Press, Austin, Texas in autumn 2007.
A four-time Pushcart Nominee, She received two nominations for the Pushcart Prize in poetry in December, 2006. Her anthology THE SORROW PSALMS: A Book of Twentieth Cemtury Elegy was chosen "Book of the Month" by England's "Poetry Kit" last October. Featured artist in SNOW MONKEY and ARTISTRY OF LIFE this winter, an entire issue of YGRADSIL (Montreal e-zine) will be devoted to publication of new Strongin work and criticism of it by Hugh Fox, Cassandra Robison, Suchoon Mo.James LeCuyer, and others.
STOP AT THE WHITE!
"I want white toys for my mice."
1.
St Kathryn’s in Montreal
had the best toystore behind plateglass. I was the one shunned
the parade
passed by, the one whose
speakers seemed to glimpse a sky full of nothing but cold science or now and then some bizarre God who jests with his puppets. Why did I defy physics
& soar? then came down from sky a penitent on hands & knees: cobalts, an Indigo child, on ice: This wasn’t me: it was Il Povarello on cold days:
One can smell 32 degrees: the tipping point for freeze:
like live flowers behind glass: agonizing, precise.
2.
Iron till the steam-triangle cools
Affection may
flouirsh at the sweep of a pen.
Strike till you’ve had things
out
harsh & bright
with God:
strike till the light is white
the songs get brighter as the dark crystalized:
My twelfth summer the urn was hard
stone:
filled, not withj grains of sand,
but the afterburn
ashes
of the best girl
I’d ever held in my
yearning
arms.
3.
STOP AT THE WHITE
Stop at the White Light,
A sale of ancestral objects
in an orange crate
at some wayside
where they burn
tires to keep their blood warm:
blood oranges
at their
stand:
A carbine
flare:
Old Joanie doll from the knotty-pine first-floor landing.
Radiation-people
lie in
royal London Hospital:
Doctors performing autopsy wear shields.
“I want white toys for my mice for Chirstmas” said the child.
In a forest of felled oak branches in town tables are piled with old snow
as for a feast
outside a reastaurant a site diners have abandoned.
Stop at the black
stair:
Granny flats are back:
the garret, the garage.
Ruled out after World War
accessory flats affordable
living space
for the old & young:
the string plucked
the goods stakced
the song sung.
wearing colors of the Middle Ages
I look up again to the white light which stops me in a dime:
A cloud wrapped the feathers
I don’t find God.
At least now now.
Instead, Sabbath Snow thru aisles of emotion contricted, narrow:
instead the drained emotion of Low Bone-marrow.
