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Lynne Zika is an award-winning poet and photographer and a retired editor of closed-captioning. Awards include: Pacificus Foundation Literary Award in short fiction, Little Sister Award and Moon Prize in poetry, and Viewbug Curator’s Selection, Staff Favorite, and Hero Awards in photography. Her father, also a writer/poet, bequeathed her this advice: Make every word count.

Natural Delights

Lynne Zika

Bless the folk who pitted the dates for me
and left a cleanly sliced opening dead center.

I pull four from the package
and fill them with Philadelphia cream cheese.
I thank them, too.
Four fat, stuffed dates now tease me
from the edge of my cutting board.

I don’t allow myself even one bite.
Well, okay, one lick of cream cheese.
I leave the flesh of fruit alone.

Mortadella and Baby Swiss
tuck themselves into a brioche roll.
Two. I haven’t eaten today.

In the absence of elegance,
a juice glass serves Cabernet Sauvignon.
A bit of mortadella, brioche, and cheese,
a date stuffed with natural delight,
and thou, my dear.
Always thou.

First Come

It isn’t the first time I’ve seen men flip.
From Darling, I missed your hot body in the night
to whispering with a sister in the kitchen
over a lunch to which the observer is not invited.

From I can’t get enough of this lady
to I’m seeing a student of mine, kind of young.
She really needs to be turned over my knee and spanked.
Was that the secret?

From I’ll dream of you in that gown tonight
to Silence. Absence. Gone.

Women tend to examine ourselves
in the face of such discrepancy.
Did I offend him?
Say too much of myself?
Neglect his needs?
We look for answers in the inexplicable.

In the midst of keening,
we burrow deep, searching ourselves
for the unforgivable flaw.
Instead we find power.
We find a woman who beams herself into the world.
We find Diana, Venus, Mater Deum
symbols of creativity, birth, fertility, union,
nurturing, the cycle of growth.
Surely they will make their way
into the world again.
But first come The Algea,
spirits of pain and suffering,
the goddesses of grief.

The Other Jack

He roamed the great fields splayed around us,
ears perked or nose to ground.
Sometimes he brought a dog companion home.
Hey, Ma, meet my friend Joe!
The deer leg he brought home one day
had to be confiscated.
It was not fresh meat.
I think he forgave me;
we still speak.

Then, in the city,
man, those ears go Boing!
before I even see the other dog-on-leash
at the end of the block.
Its owner crosses the street.

Now my husband walks Jack.
I can no longer.

Every damn mealtime
Jack watches hopefully for a treat,
right ear cocked.
We try to keep our indulgences
reasonable, not to fatten him
with our affection or grief,
but, God, Doc,
you should have seen
how once this fellow ran.

 — B. Lynne Zika