by Robbi Nester

“you look just like/your mother, he says, “who looks like a fire/of
suspicious origin.”
from “A Violence,” Nicole Sealey


My mother looked like a woman, a nicely made
woman in her neat turquoise slacks and size 4 shoes,
buttons never hanging by a thread, her face bearing
evidence of everything she feared—up escalators,
finding her way in a strange place, leaving the house.
But she was a fire, an earthquake, an electric storm—
battering the roof with hail, sending blue balls of light,
unraveling skeins of static yarn rolling across the room.
She sent the poltergeist trudging up the stairs, stopping
outside my door like a persistent sleepwalker.
Most of all, she was a voice, telling stories, singing,
teaching me to get the language right,
pin the world in place with words.

Every workday, my father climbed the cellar stairs
at evening, saying “Shut up Lydia. You too, bitch,”
meaning me. All the power of her words couldn’t
keep my father’s belt from lashing at my legs and back.
She spoke less and less, mostly muttered to herself
under her breath in two languages. I saw it all.
I was the message in a bottle sent into the world
to speak her truth. It was my job to plot escape.
She filled me with the family lore. Her silence
turned her to a force that could not be contained,
especially in that small a space, the pressure
mounting underground, voice trapped
behind those perfect teeth, behind the fear
of uttering the unacceptable, the dangerous—
how my father’s family left us to our fate,
wanting to hide the shame, the family
madness, truth that everyone could see
but didn’t want to hear or say.
When a woman is stifled for so long,
the voice will curdle in her chest
and make of her a fire of suspicious origin,
smelling of gasoline and melted plaster.
Her face becomes a crime scene, evident
to anyone who reads the signs, speaking
all the outrage of those who outwardly
accept their fate. Broken wires spark
a conflagration. I must trace the fire
to its origin. I am the arsonist. I am the match.

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Robbi Nester is a retired college educator and author of 4 books of poetry, editor of 3 anthologies. She hosts two poetry series on Zoom--Verse Virtual's monthly reading and Words With You. Her website may be found on robbinester.net.

by Robbi Nester

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

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After Biltmore Backyard by Robb Shaffer


In autumn I hunger for seasons,
the small fires of October
burning fields to the root,
skies suffused with smoke,
reducing summer to ash, to
leaf mold and yellow sheaves.
A ribbon of migrating geese
sounds their convivial trumpets.
Naked oaks, late-season
bathers caught in a chill,
spread their silver branches,
catching a last bit of sun.
Covens of pines summon forth
winter; the smallest Japanese
maples burst into flame.

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Robbi Nester lives and writes in Southern California. She has published four books of poetry and edited three anthologies, as well as hosting and curating two monthly poetry reading series on Zoom. Her website may be found at www.robbinester.net.

by Robbi Nester

After Brendan Constantine
From an antique rug beater to a flamingo

We have never met, but I want you to know how much
I envy your feathers, pink as a cloud at sunrise, nearly
weightless, with their hollow shafts, capable of carrying
you great distances. For myself, I go nowhere except
out into the dusty yard, where the maid channels
her resentment by smacking the master’s Persian
carpet till it yields years of ground in sand, blown in
from the beach. I am all knots, woven of bamboo,
while you arc in one tapered sweep, your neck
and wings, your beak, curved as a church key,
streamlined and graceful. I stay at home alone
and dream, while you travel yearly with extended
family, noisy but amiable, through skies of seamless
blue, landscapes of cloud, knowing beyond question
the exact location of the beach in Tunisia where you
were hatched. I would love to ride on your back,
tucked between your wings, though I am afraid
to lose my job, beating the world clean, a task
we have great need of these days, but if you ever
wish to come out of the cold and damp, to dry
between your toes, I invite you to stand with me
by the fire, each of us balancing on one long leg.

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Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry, the most recent being Narrow Bridge (Main Street Rag, 2019) and editor of three anthologies, including The Plague Papers. Her poems, reviews, articles and essays have been widely published. Most recently, they have appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig, Verse-Virtual, North of Oxford, Inflectionist Review, and are forthcoming in Spillway, Tampa Review, and Gargoyle.

by Robbi Nester

to Richard

We start by laying out the tiles,
the deluxe set your mother bought
one Christmas long ago, the one
with off-white tiles, like teeth, matching
brackets to lay out the words, metal pegs
to tote up points. Best of all, a board
that we could spin to face us, each
in turn. We couldn’t wait to pick out
letters, ponder combinations, gnawing
on your mother’s peanut butter cookies
till the board stuck to the table and the
buttermilk was gone. The others hated
playing us. We always won. Now, it’s you
and me, the kid grown up and moved away.
Worthy partners and opponents, curators
of words, we challenge one another.
You lose a turn, then I do. I’m stuck
with the x; too many vowels. You find
a clever way to use the Q. There’s no one
here but us. It hardly matters that some
tiles are missing. We don’t mind the gaps,
forget for just a moment empty streets
and dire statistics. Let’s make it last.
We’re pondering the choices we still have.
Everyone we ever played stays in the game.

*This poem was a Finalist in the SWWIM For-the-Fun-of-It Contest.

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Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry, a chapbook, Balance (White Violet, 2012) and three collections: A Likely Story (Moon Tide, 2014), Other-Wise (Kelsay, 2017), and Narrow Bridge (Main Street Rag, 2019). She has also edited three anthologies--The Liberal Media Made Me Do It! (Nine Toes, 2014), Over the Moon: Birds, Beasts, and Trees (published as a special issue of Poemeleon Poetry Journal in 2017), and a new one that hasn't yet found a home. She is an elected member of the Academy of American Poets, and her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies.