Eve Rifkah


Spindle                                                                        
                   for Beth

1

Do not mutilate
                   a shot through 
a stab      
do not staple or spindle
               attach or fold       do not

change the integrity of pulp and fiber
          flat as a sheet on a new made bed
no rumples no disorder
no sharp render of words


spindle 2 

She spins the growing length of yarn
as a spider falling from silken thread
spindle drops like a top pulls the thread long
after each fall she balances on her knee
winds the new yarn around the shaft
begins again. This sending out and returning
a music from empty to full
a hank niddy-noddied wound 
Her hands find their rhythm 
her body anchored in her chair 
She will tie the ends of her life together
on the sharp shafts of her needles


spindle 3      78 rpm

Mesmerized in spin       a dog cocks his head
to the bell of a horn         dog spun to blur
four heavy discs piled on the crook of the spindle
fall one by one       then    turned over
A symphony cut into segments
this is the way I learned Dvorak’s New World
that William Tell Overture was not 
the triumphant gait of a mask hid cowboy 
on a white horse
Listened to Dinah who sang for my father
The old records crackle with time and scratch


Spindle 3  33⅓ rpm

Vivaldi seasons undivided 
symphonies unbroken         Mendelssohn 
Schumann      Debussy   the magic train of dreams
wrapped in harmonics to shed the now    the here
walk in meadows where the sun is warm
and nothing ever hurts

Eve Rifkah was co-founder of Poetry Oasis, Inc. (1998-2012), a non-profit poetry association dedicated to education and promoting local poets. Founder and editor of DINER, a literary magazine with a 7-year run. MFA Vermont College.

She is the author of Dear Suzanne (WordTech Communications, 2010) and Outcasts: the Penikese Leper Hospital 1905-1921 (Little Pear Press, 2010); chapbooks Scar Tissue (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and At the Leprosarium 2003 winner of the Revelever Chapbook Contest. Single poems and flash fiction stories have appeared in many journals.

 
 

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