Georgia Kornbluth

  Georgia Kornbluth, poet, painter, and editor, lives in New York City with one husband, two cats, two aloe plants, one Christmas cactus, one philodendron, two plants whose names are not known, three computers, hundreds of artworks, thousands of books, and countless newspapers and miscellaneous publications.

E-mail Georgia at  
"Georgia Kornbluth" < georgia_k@verizon.com >
>    

Shades

Invisibility, the topic no one has ever seen,
lurks silent beneath the conversation.
The third cat, the cat no one has ever seen,
	lurks invisible beneath the table.
The same table that so graciously shelters
	the first and second felines
	from bodily awareness.
No one mentions these indiscretions,
	as if to speak of them would 
breach the barrier between seen and unseen,
	blur sense and non-sense.

Someone's broken umbrella clutters the hall.
A lost coin plays truant in the black silk purse.
Unearthly tunes quaver in the alley.
The odd button found on the stairs last week
	reposes now in Grandma's button box
	among respectable citizenry,
	doubtful though its provenance be.

Quasi-literate fantasy raises interesting specters,
	foul-breathing ghosts.
The angry dead croak into 
unwilling ears vengeful messages.
Unquiet souls possess reluctant mediums,	
	deliver yet again the lessons
	their recalcitrant pupils refused in life.

New Jersey in a Manic Moment 

Slivers split off earthbound 
mountaintops or really palisades,
soar aboveriver,
waft into past-twilit 
deeply purple realms of sky. 

Needed there by whom? 
For what purpose? 

The lightminded among them 
fritter and disintegrate 
at the edges, 
emulating clouds. 
A few stalwart solids 
sail on intact. 

This would be over New Jersey, 
you know, 
refracted by the Hudson, 
seen from Manahatta, 
mountainstones fleeing skyward. 

New Jersey in a manic moment 
occasioned by a drunken spree 
of fractured lightning 
overmuch indulged at sunset. 

Dawn to Thunder

Your distant thunder roils the far dark
where it lingers, teasing my timid approach.
I wake reluctant to see your storm.
I have displeased you, or so you claim.
You threaten terrible retribution.
I tremble, square my shoulders, lift my chin.
I tremble, mask my light beneath your clouds.

Once more your sour temper belches. You lurch closer.
The fire of your angry eyes, not yet seen, sears
the clenched lids with which I dissemble sleep.
Soon your full fury pours down
"in thunder, lightning, and in rain."
Even as your jagged arrows ground themselves,
your deep voice proclaims they're here.
Not far but here where your dark cloud bursts,
to dump its flood and uncover my waking light.

On you rage, and on, in my now conscious sight.
Birds won't fly over the turf you plunder
but hide beneath a narrow overlap, a down-beaten
branch of fragile leaves. Domestic animals
cloister while you vent, hiding anyplace.
I cower, fronting bravely.

At last you subside, move on, tug behind you
your burden of low-slung clouds. 
Just as I relax, you double back, 
release one last volley, its lowering roar 
following less closely upon the final thrown bolt.
A last spate of dumped-out rain, and then you're gone.
My bright gray light expands your still electrified air.