and the winners are:

I used a random number generator to pick two winners: And they are:

Mara 

Diane Kendig

I didn’t get contact information, so Mara and Diane, you have 2 weeks to claim your books. Send me an email with your snail mail address, and your book(s) will be on the way. You will both get a copy of my chapbook, what we owe each other, and one of you (surprise!) will also receive Meridian, by Kathleen Jesme.

email me @ risaden (at) gmail (dot) com.

As a bonus surprise, I will also send my chapbook to the first person who responds to this posting, telling me why you want a copy of it!

Winners will be announced on Sunday, and

. . . here is one of my NaPoMo poems from this year. . .

The first summer of breasts

Until they sprouted, I danced summers
on the lawn at Old Soldiers Home
where grampa played clarinet
on the bandstand and gramma sat

on a slatted bench shelling peas.
I was surrounded then by knightly
gestures of young tomboys. I knew
not the bounty nor the power I possessed.

Do you remember snap beads? I have
pictures that declare my queer sense
of style at six, a scarf wrapped rakishly
about my neck, a front-zipped one-piece

playsuit, a pair of cherry Keds sans socks.
My first boyfriend reminds me on facebook
how we showered together the summer
after 8^th grade—my breasts little birds then—

but didn’t touch. You were like a cat, he says,
entertaining, but aloof. Snap beads
were those jelly-bean colored plastic orbs
that us girlfriends made into necklaces or anklets

and gave one another. We were in love
but didn’t know it. I didn’t really know much then.
But if you do remember snap beads, you will recall
that each one had both male and female connections.  

!! The Big Poetry Giveaway !!

April is National Poetry Month and I am participating in the Big Poetry Giveaway again this year, along with a bunch of fabulous poets and curated by the great Susan Rich. And this year, I will send two contestants a copy of my chapbook, what we owe each other. One contestant will also receive one of my favorite books of this year, Meridian, by Kathleen Jesme, published by Tupelo Press. To enter for a chance to win, just leave a comment. I will chose two winners at random at the end of the month. It’s that easy.

For Jon

What we owe each other

The vacated bed where his body lies
lifeless makes us wild.  Wails echo
in the empty room.  Human remains
unravel as fragments of undone tasks 
swallow what meager breath we sustain. 

In this, Jesus was wrong. The dead cannot 
take up the shovel. World goes on without
them, or perhaps even the world dies,
that is not for us to know. So be at peace.
We will not leave you to bury your dead alone. 

 

My chapbook, dedicated to Jon Greenberg, is now available on Amazon. The cover is a photo taken by Thomas McGovern at Jon’s funeral and I have used some of Jon’s journal entries written during 1992. 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0985581913/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me&seller

Why I travel light

Lying in bed, uncertain
of sleep. 

Leaping off habitual paths,
a gecko in heat.

No dream in sight,
rubbish soaked in spit.

How clouds surrender weight ─
drip by drip.

 

A definition of compassion

                                                                         After my patient

stormed past me with fists near my face and slammed
the door gunshot loud enough to bring a crowd
to my exam room, I went on with my day,
the gnawing core of me ignored.

But on the drive home, I wondered if he knew where I live,
if he would show up, or already be inside with that crowbar.

Caring for the ailing is not usually hazardous,
or perhaps I’ve lost track of danger. I do it
and shut up.

He showed up in my dreams. I know I can’t evade death,
no single life is spared. But, like anyone, I fear ruthless brutality.
Sickness I know, or know well enough. In my exam room,
on the drive home, in bed, I think I know enough about illness
to drive myself there solo.

I keep thinking about him, his truculent past, his sorrow.
I am paid to attend suffering you see,
and when I have to say no, I can’t do that,
I am paid, I suppose, to suffer with. 

My Happy Chappie!

 

The Lives You Touch Publications is pleased to announce the release of what we owe each other by Risa Denenberg, the first chapbook in our 2013 Chapbook Publication Series.

 Here is what the critics are saying:

Risa Denenberg’s what we owe each other is a series of poems that stun with their straightforwardness and stark beauty.  She tends, in the strongest possible sense of that verb, to a friend, Jon, who is dying in agony.  When we close her book which is, first and last, his book too, we need to know his name.  Jon has been her teacher as well as her friend.  Their book is made up of the lessons he has taught her and she, in turn, is teaching us, “what we owe each other.”  The poems in what we owe each other are what I hope for when I read poetry.  More than that, they are what hope is for.  They are cause for rejoicing.

 William Slaughter, Author of Untold Stories and The Politics of My Hearts, Editor of Mudlark, An Electronic Journal of Poetry and Poetics

I’ve been a fan of Risa Denenberg’s poetry for some years because each time I encounter one of her poems, I feel stronger afterwards, more trusting, perhaps, more resolved. Each of us is on a separate journey (each leading to the same result), and yet we vary in our levels of resolve and our ability to give voice to how we feel.  It doesn’t take long before she reassures “what is needed is uttered without words.”  Denenberg knows we are, each of us, alone.  And yet she shares with us the notes from her own journey, and for this I am grateful and for this, I will keep this chapbook on my favorite bookshelf at home.

Sherry O’Keefe, Author of Cracking Geodes Open

Risa Denenberg’s incisive and moving chapbook, what we owe each other, implies that belated contemplation of the event of a death is necessary to reveal who and what might reconcile us to life’s temporal configuration.  These poems are prayers to assist the living, for they transform dying from an incoherent series of unrelated events and symptoms linked by the fiction of an autonomous deteriorating body into a narrative.  The “this” that Denenberg’s collection of poems acknowledges, our spirit and the flesh, can only remain vital if it recognizes and contends with attachment as debt to the dead and living.

Debra Levine, Assistant Professor of Theatre, NYU Abu Dhabi