Two Poems by Leah Umansky

A Harboring

You’re only ever understood in parts.
The difficulty and the pleasure are both essential.
You could begin with feast, then nighttime and touch.
Nobody is ever anybody else, right?

The difficulty and the pleasure are both essential.
A line that ends and starts with intention.
Nobody is ever anybody else, right?
Everyone knows it doesn’t count for much.

A line that ends and starts with intention.
I want to dish myself something real, and
Everyone knows it doesn’t count for much.
No misfortune, sunny present, or genuine wild.

I want to dish myself something real, and
In the end, this is just playing. I play.
No misfortune, sunny present, or genuine wild.
There’s a satire in this texture, the actual grief.

In the end, this is just playing. I play.
My true calling is in not feeling lonely all the time and in my sight.
There’s a satire even in this texture, the actual grief.
Some are so good and some are pretty forgettable.

My true calling is in not feeling lonely all the time and in my sight –
That wild reinventing way I can be gruff, honest, and true, but
Some are so good and some are pretty forgettable.
Still, there’s discovery: this will make a way in the world.

That wild reinventing way I can be gruff, honest and true.
Maybe the best thing is to just donate the heart, my heart.
Still, there’s discovery: this too will make a way in the world.
What is held to love and lore wanders beside me, a harboring.

 

Fire and Fury

Fire and fury
is a wheel,
is a premise
into the ground,
into these dangerous days,
these devious ways,
and the middle wants we strive for.

I thought the wondering would bring us out of the vexed.
I thought the longing would slog away what moves bitterly, but no.

No.
No.
No.

Stocks. Stones. Bones.
That is how the close-to-hand bites.

This is the terror of the matter.
There is no safe distance.

 

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About the Author:

Leah Umansky is the author of The Barbarous Century (Eyewear 2018), among others. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and is the curator and host of The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as POETRY, Guernica, The New York Times, Pleiades, Salamander, and the anthologies, The Eloquent Poem (Persea Books) and Misrepresented Peoples (NYQ Books). She is #teamkhaleesi & #teambernard.