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Paula Cisewski

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Red Poem

In the fenced tennis courts, a woman roller
discos solo, weaving between green nets on fuchsia
skates. Meanwhile, an upside-down flag hangs
from one bungalow and an upside-right flag hangs

from the next. This neighborhood we call our own.
I’m home slicing radishes into a bowl
which is a version of freedom. Doesn’t
the word Meanwhile feel red? Isn’t red

the most simultaneous color? Probably because
of blood course-course-coursing through us animals
while we are alive and able to wonder anything, and
probably because of the unflagging ads on all

our screens abusing red to make us feel sexy and
hungry. Prescription drug. Cola. Survival manual.
The tubes of ruby wax I buy, apply, and then nibble
off my lips by the pound, I suppose, over the years

as I fret over whether anyone’s happy or the right level
of safe. And the neighbors in their red caps. Are they happy,
I wonder, watching from the kitchen window a robin drop
a worm at the feet of its stunned and nestless fledgling. Then

a hawk perches on the back gate. I say, Honey, come here!
A hawk on the back gate! We give our attention to the raptor.
The baby bird abandons the worm and hides itself in the roses.

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Orange Poem

The best days of childhood were a good
rock in my palm on the beach of a great

lake. Smooth like glass but wrong. Is this
amber? No. Agate? Still no. That’s family:

Everyone knowing what right looks like except
for the youngest with her pocket of negligible

treasures including probably a lost tooth
from her head that she’ll sell in the night.

Being a poet is loving some great rocks no one
wants. So cut to today: This monarch

in the marigolds might in fact be a viceroy,
which mimics the monarch to avoid becoming

some bird’s snack. One must take care when
mentioning a woman / a poet / even a girl

with stones weighting her pocket. We’re all
meant to be sad, sad as the sadness of lilies in

the late dog days. Every fire I start from that
sadness blows its gorgeous smoke in my face.

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Yellow Poem

I know it’s not what I saw but what I thought I saw
was two tiger swallowtails chasing a goldfinch down the street

like the blackbirds who chase the crow off, and the crows
who chase the hawk.        Why no butterflies in Mom’s elegy?

I still wonder, years later, then some neighbor’s whiny hotrod careens
through my grief.        Do you ever stand at the curb and count the seconds,

too—One Amazon truck, two Amazon trucks—while the outside
world and the inside jokes mix like milk and orange juice?

While from the freshly deadheaded echinacea wafts
the off-kilter small print in your contract with peace?

No one needs their feelings about butterflies to be
caught in a poem, but she did love them, I think.

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Paula Cisewski’s books include the newly released The Becoming Game, Ceremonies for No Repair, Quitter (Diode Editions Book Prize winner), The Threatened Everything, Ghost Fargo (Nightboat Poetry Prize winner, selected by Franz Wright), Upon Arrival, and several chapbooks. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from organizations including the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Oberholtzer Foundation. She is co-founder, co-publisher, and co-editor of Beauty School Editions.

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