Leslie Prosterman
Leslie Prosterman, author of the poetry book Snapshots and Dances, has poems forthcoming in Axon and most recently has published in Unlikely Stories, Maintenant, and Journal of Italian Translation. She is at work on a new book called Love and Then Tomorrow. She appears as a poet/dancer in vaudeville revues, experimental dance concerts and on YouTube. A former Associate Professor of American Studies and Folklore, she now teaches community poetry workshops. Befitting a former student of trapeze, she oscillates between NYC, DC, and Chilmark, MA.
Rain again today
Winter storms whip the mountain
Ten thousand frogs sing.
CLN WR, 2015
Beatitude: from Syria
they pull the dinghy up and sixty figures, some children,
fall on their knees on the sand, blessing
the grit and the stones, blessing the sharp-edged
pieces of brown glass, the unmoving earth, blessing
blessing they make their way
across the parched island,
to the stony mainland, to the promised North.
This tense dream
the passengers on the rubber raft,
a few still afloat,
if they are lucky,
hold to tight, even while sinking
a hundred meters from shore.
Unlikely Stories, Mark V, 2021
Anxiety at the Borders
we will make them different we smooth their carried from away sand
abraded surface, rub out their words give them new ones that they did not say
give ourselves them so we can know ourselves the wall tells us we are
wall
out behind the wire in back of the gates inside the boxcars but still
something remains the traces. They say they can be found, they can find.
Where are they, the traces, of the ones who seemed to have less. They search
the sky, they look for water eventually
they become foam. They write even now in the sand, with their bones.
Unlikely Stories, Mark V, 2021
Cartography Without Maps
The Binary.
The story is the victor and the vanquishing,
the loser and the vanquished.
There is no one else in the story.
Up or down. In or out. Win or lose Win or lose. With us or against us. These are the rules.
Later, Wider:
doorsteps. Those in between, at a tangent or a sometimes or a parallel. Periodicity… Some in a circle
or a tree. Someone feathered, somebody about, iridescent and then again
and perhaps reverse or woodsplit or spilt.
Liberatory long through to bell, new and sneezing loosen for sound—pause and run
blow zinnia wreck rag floes porosity olla wider float fox hamada diasporic love up on
Maintenant, 2021
A Draft of Santas
last Saturday afternoon bands of roving santas started appearing near
Washington Square Park, santas in groups of 3,4,7, isolated santas,
santas packed in taxis, reindeer hoisting santas, santas encamped
in Penn Station with paper bags and bottles, downtown santas
waiting in line for Pearl Oyster Bar to open, low-bellied boy santas,
santas with cleavage, singing santas, santas arguing about film theory,
as the evening wore on, partial santas,
a few elves
New Verse News, 2018
Paris/Beirut
all afternoon I defined massacre shambles abbatoir
then resorted to the binary
the they did we did the done to will do
the right the wrong the dark the light the lash the gun the bomb
contracted to one straight line:
fear to rage to hate to kill to make a them that isn't me.
but by night I was reminded
of the spaciousness
of the unclosed curve
of the infinite horizon
May we live with uncovered hearts
May that which binds our hearts be dissolved
into the widest possible compass of us
New Verse News 2017
Open heart
climbing curly watery heights
a pine balustrade up against, to the sky any time
down the hall love is doing
First Literary Review —East, 2016
