3 Poems by Karen Neuberg

Summer Memories

Swaying waves of heat
rising. On our way, it’s easy.
Car ride that leads to the shore.
Passenger, my feet on hot-vinyl
dashboard. Whole days of nothing to do
we melted ourselves into them.
We were between
school years. What sat on our shoulders
wasn’t the world.
That came later.


See Me Begin/To Open

Hovering over myself
in dream, clouds
in my hands.

Attempting scrutiny
that fails to fully notice
what I (long to) see.

Bones of my certainty
being crushed under
gloom talk.

Along the garden path
flowers are insistent
on unfurling, despite.

And with it, me.


Fervor of Memory

When the I am that insists
you are is taken to the house
of shifting time & landscape

inhabited by waves of electrified

flashes overlapping, elongating,
twisting about each other,
passions forgotten can recur,

mind & body whirling in the surge
until a deep-throated cry
wakes you, dream spilling out,
the knot of it cleaving.


Bionote

Karen Neuberg writes poetry while drinking strong coffee in a room with windows overlooking trees. She’s the author of PURSUIT (Kelsay Books,) and three chapbooks including “the elephants are asking” (Glass Lyre Press). Her poems have appeared in numerous publications including Black Moon, Constellate Literary Journal, Nixes Mate Review, and Verse Daily. She is associate editor of First Literary Review-East and lives in Brooklyn, NY.