Shadows & Goatbones by Barbara F. Lefcowitz

The Bans of Portland, Maine

The House by Barbara F. Lefcowitz

In the harbor, shining emerald slab, red and plum whorls interlaced, the grooved frequencies of ancient trade routes. I would come back with notepad and winejug, my claim staked with a braid of kelp, measured steps. How can I know now if it’s slipped back to sea or...

3: 00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Savings Time. My roof is a ballroom, the tempo of its rain-dance ranging from tap to tango to foxtrot to waltz, a slow sarabande, intermittent soft-shoe until the occasional surf of distant cars is the only music left. Strings of rain have...

The special tonight is homebaked Loneliness Pie. We’ve run out of everything else the waitress says. Sorry. The jukebox is playing Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture. B-minor music for a dark and solitary place. Somebody else must be here beside the waitress and me. In...

Its gusts accompanied by a rush of dry leaves, the banging of shutters and overturned trash cans, the wind never sings alone. Piano notes from an open window counterpoint a chorus of insects, a fire truck’s siren screams down the street with the surf-like dirge of...

Silver linings have broken away from their clouds. I’m not sure when this separation began, can only note how the linings twist and float, wrap around hailstones, debris tossed from rooftops; dangle dangerously from wires. Slivers of glare cling to eyes and hair....

Most of the streamers are yellow some aqua, some candy- apple red The children have hung them from ropes and wires to make the event more festive Some they have coiled around trees and telephone poles, tied into lopsided ribbons and bows Soon the event will begin The...

I’m in love with Al Bowlly leaning towards a microphone back when the world was out of money, moving away, arms curved, spread palms embracing a woman he shapes from the recording booth’s hushed air while he croons to myself alone Come to me my Melancholy Baby, each...

In the auto repair shop’s waiting room a glut of clustered balloons, force-fed multicolored grapes so monstrously huge no human mouth could fit one inside. The wall-size TV shows a smiling woman who won first prize for raising mammoth pumpkins, too massive for anyone...