Lisa Zimmerman

Poet

Review of Sainted

Lisa Zimmerman’s Sainted is a wondrous book, a composite of vignettes tendered to fashion a contemporary perspective on ancient figures.  A feminist bravado, awakens voices to reclaim agency and power over one’s own body and soul— “What did God know about the uterus?” –These poems are timely, lyrical, meditative, and inventive. The poet excavates holy terrain, fleshes out Saint Veronica, Saint Clare, and Saint Bernadette, to remind us of the ache and splendor of living.  The poet skillfully casts a wide net on the morality of the ages, invoking the many incarnations of greed, lust, loss and despair.  Each poem marvels with luminous details of small moments, leading to the complex filaments of life: “No man would ever own me.”  These fiercely evocative and revelatory poems, allow us savory glimpses under the seams, “the midwives came and went like weather.”  A crucible, hot to the touch, Sainted could not be timelier in pathos, tone and tenacity.  “I saw tears drop onto his tunic, / small moons of grief.”  A stunning book that holds its heart out, Sainted is profoundly radiant and indelible for how poems can astonish, inform and shape our lives.

—Cynthia Atkins, author of Still-Life with God

Avalon and the Dinosaurs

For days she wore only the aqua sweatshirt
spaghetti stained with grimy cuffs,
the brontosaurus beaming out at us from her chest
the words EXTINCT IS FOREVER, which she cannot read,
floating below his happy face.
He is her friend
she wears him like an emblem
through the lacquered afternoon
stomping through the house, her private rain forest.
And we know as we watch her
that she expects to spot him at any time
around some corner, in the garden, or at least at the zoo
where surely all creatures are saved and celebrated.
How she would pat and embrace him
her hand a white leaf against his skin.
She would feed him bits of bread, rice, sliced banana, anything
to see him tremble with joy
down the length of his great uncomplicated body.

Then one morning she approached us
just risen from sleep and said “All the dinosaurs died”
with a grief so deep and pure we could only
nod and apologize and regret—
she learned so soon that what we love
moves on sometimes across the dreamy landscape
long before we ever hold it in our arms.

(from How the Garden Looks from Here)

Poem for Saint John of the Cross

In the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God~Saint John of the Cross

Your father married for love
an orphan below his noble station.
Discarded by his wealthy kindred
they say your parents nurtured you in poverty—
and the bread was as sweet as any bread

and the days offered their shiny hands
and their little streams of water
singing in the glades.

I see you wandering happily as a boy,
the sun a crown on your small head,
your bare feet scuffing the dust.
God chirped like a wood lark
in the throat of afternoon
and the lonely months in prison
were far ahead beneath the great shadow
of the future.

I try to follow you there, O mystic,
to watch you defy your greedy brethren
monks who will reject your reforms, your love
of less, of days returned to prayer and fasting.

Fat and threatened, they silenced you
in a narrow stone cell, one tiny window
like the one in the soul where day after day
the voice of God pierced your suffering.

Out of emptiness, a full heart—
out of abandonment, a poem of seeking—
out of utter darkness, a gleam of pure light—
love’s last trembling boat waiting for you
to get in, and row.

(December 7, 2017 SWWIMM.org)

What I Might Write to My Mother

Nineteen years is how
a lie gets disguised as over it.
Where did you go? After all
 
this cold river melt downstream 
I miss you most when one daughter 
flicks her wrist just so and her sister borrows
your pretty legs to kick beneath
her short black skirt.
I just got middle-aged—
tiny, intricate webs,
my smile’s sad afterimage.

And suddenly—the way you left—spring
starts up like that Sunday morning in April—
all ache and blossom, church bells,
your inconsolable daughters.
And what then, Mom, what?
                             
                              (Hamilton Stone Review 2017)