Julie Wenglinski – Five Poems


 

Birdland

The bell rang again as I left the shop
to step out to the street below.
I bought a smart fedora hat, so black,
and could not wait to put it on.

The light turned green and I began to cross,
when a pair of mourning doves descended,
downy buff and blushing bloom,
to cuddle in my crown of felt,
pressing in their plumes.

Beneath their living, wildish weight,
I heard their round content.
Their tails fanned out beyond the brim,
a halo in the morning light.

I thought, how I love this rare new hat,
so warm and snug on my bare head.



Another January

The alley lamps glint
a soft roseate light
tinting the blanket below
of bright white.
We snuggle and sip,
holding hands in the night,
listening to Django,
and watching it snow.



Shoes

Darling!
I’m over here
by the pool,
in the sunshine,
sipping absinth from a starry glass,
shopping online for shoes.

A wavy, blonde Picasso woman horse,
I look at thousands of shoes.
Black and tan,
leather and faux,
boot and sandal.
I must chose carefully
because I will need four of each.



One More Morning

Beneath a mostly cloudy sky,
I unearth myself
from beneath a tangle of cats
and faded quilts.

I sit up with slow flat focus,
and reconnect with my conscious self,
take a small and yellow pill
and wait for the anxious to pass.

With red-scrubbed face,
fan of bed-smashed hair,
and sequined slippers,
I float downstairs in my unraveling

blue kimono, to join you outside
on the glider,
softly swinging with your coffee,
next to the checkered woodpeckers.

My blurred morning eyes
rest on your summer smile
and your Irish eyes taking me in.
I see my own reflection in your shine.

Swaying and listening to the chatter of the cicadas.
I tuck the solid soundness of you
within my chest
where the anxious was.



A Poem is a Scent

A SCENT – as if the grassy ground
exhales ageless vapors
that wake and stir your lizard brain
to recall.


 

Author’s Statement on Beauty

Beauty comes in different packages. I am preoccupied with words, with mixing them up, getting them a little wrong to surprise, in order for the reader to forget she is mortal for one split second. There is so much loveliness and drama in a small backyard, fragrance and sound that touch the oldest cells in our brains. There is the nonsense of a gauzy dream that can be captured and made real in a poem. For me there is the sweetness of late marriage, knowing there is no time to waste. There is pure whimsy just for the fun of it, to be able to draw a cartoon with words. There is so much possibility in the overheard seeds of conversation behind the shiny, red menus of a Chinese restaurant. There is the beauty of the moody sea, the cosmos, the physics we now know, the silent snow. There is the magic of travel where everything is new again. There is beauty everywhere we look and in every second we live and breathe.


 

Julie Wenglinski is a retired software engineer in Richmond, VA. She has had poetry and flash fiction published in Masque & Spectacle, Star82 Review, Nonbinary Review, The Inflectionist Review and in Puff Puff Prose, Poetry and a Play.