Tag Archives: poetry

The Early Bird and other Myths

Posted on November 20, 2022 by jillbpearlman

Oh bathroom window, what are those ash-gray clouds,needle in the morning’s eye  — dawn too early in its strange light-threading.To 6am, I bring another party:  my thoughts, light and frisky in dark crevices,champagne-splashed agent of chaos, so loud, you say, … Continue reading →

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Bastille to Puritan Village: Strange Magic

Posted on October 30, 2022 by jillbpearlman

Each time, after countless trips, still strange magic.Hours ago, we were eating croissants in the sun, looking at the soft green column of the Bastille, the genie de la Liberté, golden wings aloft, still leaping.Today I wake up to crisp carpeting … Continue reading →

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Armageddon Blues

Posted on March 13, 2022 by jillbpearlman

I wrote the poem “Armageddon Blues,” which was published in Salamander Poetry Journal in Winter 2018-2019. It doesn’t seem to have lost its relevance! The enduring question: Is there time to slice the cucumber? ARMAGEDDON BLUES If my nerves were … Continue reading →

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Digging Out, Literally!

Posted on January 30, 2022 by jillbpearlman

The fun of digging out is that we are digging out from what we are seldom digging out from.   We are not working our way out of spates and chains of email, nor piles of snail mail, nor escaping … Continue reading →

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What Asked to Come Back from the Trip

Posted on December 12, 2021 by jillbpearlman

One charming cliche pops up when you are going on a trip — people ask, can you pack me in your suitcase?  When you’re returning, it’s a moot point.  Or is it?    I wouldn’t have known it when I … Continue reading →

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The Carpe Diem Dilemma

Posted on April 25, 2021 by jillbpearlman

Oh, moralizing culture! Since we have so little understanding of where we are, there will be endless pronouncements of where we are. Certainties about what we’ve learned from the pandemic, and prophetic images of our future.  The more we don’t … Continue reading →

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Eternal Memories in the Eternal City

Posted on April 4, 2021 by jillbpearlman

Eternal memories from the Eternal City, Rome, 2018, from the weeks we were lucky enough to spend in Testaccio. That year, religious holidays fell at the same time — Passover Seder was finishing as Easter bells began to ring.   In … Continue reading →

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Stuck in the Stalls of History

Posted on January 10, 2021 by jillbpearlman

In Roberto Bolaño’s Savage Detectives, his sprawling novel of poets, revolutionaries and Pinochet, I remember most vividly the scene of a poet trapped in a stall of the bathroom as riot police entered her university.   Where else would she … Continue reading →

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Release

Posted on November 15, 2020 by jillbpearlman

I wanted a cheap fix, a release, an anythingbut the present thing, a veering from catastrophe and know as the wind blowsthere is no quick fix but jeez, how little is granted, how stingy reality, how it seeps its goodness,  what … Continue reading →

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THEY

Posted on November 1, 2020 by jillbpearlman

THEY Kafka saw it, part tragedy, part comic. They pulled us off our axisput us in immobilis, the gnawing cellof isolation, of terror who is there, with a hand to catch — to touch us — Time slows down     stands still the top … Continue reading →

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