Originally from the East End of Long Island, Rosemary Szczygiel makes her home is Fernandina Beach, Florida. She is an artist and writer with degrees in Fine Arts from Southampton College and Library and Information Science from the University of South Florida. She has received awards from the Amelia Island Book Festival and the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York.

Her publications include “Speaking to the Extraordinary: an Interview with David Ignatow” and most recently “Extending Boundaries: an Interview with Theodore Worozbyt.” Both appear in Arts & Letters: Journal of Contemporary Culture.

Taking to heart unfamiliar experience,
in fact, an obscure image,

a broken Madonna, pieces of her smile
scattered in window light,

a Mona Lisa, a tender beam,
dust in the Jungian corners of her frame,

who cackles wildly, nervous hen scurries,
darting like an arrow, fast and naked

in the air. Et incarnatus est! divided,
worshipped in fragments

beyond museum walls, disseminated
beneath insubmissive thicket, dreamily planted

amidst a crowd of spectators, their figures
soft, spread like clouds across the sky,

I persist from nativity to present,
in the shape of a question,

to this arena, to this subject,
like a cyclone to its center.

Meticulously manicured boxwoods
drown in buckets of afternoon;
sunlight gleams; white façade
turns ruddy with age; quiet

as far as the eye can see:
painting by Van Gogh, detailed
and manic, tells the budding trees
to shade tiny birds combing the lawn
for food more carefully.

Remember, this is spring.

Old gray vine, knotted, gnarled,
twisted more twisted than wisteria,
strangled, stripped to bare threads
woven around itself into a basket.

I will be the white-man-winter-finch
nesting in your playground.
Shadows like black hands stretch
across the steps, reach into dormant
grass, cover dead leaves, choke
songbirds with silence scouting the way

intensely peaceful

brick and chain link fence, each window
secured with iron grates, tiny panes
a fist could barely fit through,

incline walkway framed with stucco,
3 times up, 3 times down, eerie
whine of old door hinges in a sudden wind,
Who lives here? How many? Where?

locking double doors leading in
and out, voices echo
through the red metal screens,
red metal grates, red metal benches.

KEEP THIS DOOR LOCKED AT ALL TIMES.

II. Music Therapy

In a repeating frenzy, the chorus makes contact
with the dancers in their heads, shout and scream in
a room with pink paper cutouts of quarter notes
fixed to the walls. All the closet doors are closed.
Has anyone seen the piano?

Tall windows without blinds, old glass
tinted by years of light, heat and wind.
Polyester gold drapes and thick scarlet
curtains block out the natural world.

Lace valances in semi circles hide the peeling paint,
cobwebs and insect nests. Uniform in their dissarray,
variable in color, no two window dressings are alike,
and nothing and no one is too different.

This is not the blue of lichens on the dogwood,
not blue sky at the perimeter of the woods. It is aqua-
ceramic tile glowing beneath industrial light.
All areas are screened and vented for summer.
Linoleum floors waxed to an impeccable brilliance.

Everything is perfectly in place; concrete
window sills green with mold, lamps with shades,
some without. Vents rattle like open mouths of forced air,
flapping up and down, repeating the phrase

QUIET PLEASE, YOU ARE ENTERING A HOSPITAL AREA.

III. New Wardrobe

Through an open cellar window, vines
crawl along the floor, pointing to men stripped,
disinfected. Old clothes piled high on wooden pallets,

in corners against the walls. Gloves
inside the trash, left to rot.
One shattered pane, one bloodied glass,
the inside lock torn open, posts ripped

from the railings. Insurrection?
Fortress walls face windows,
face the brutal geometry of small enclosures.

I will be obedient to my nurses.

Laughter in full sun beneath the cloudless sky,
beyond the great lawn of leafless trees,
some nights howl, corroding with despair--

CONSTITUTION, JUSTICE, WISDOM, MODERATION.

1.

I dragged myself across the sea from Europe,
returning to Sagaponack on Sunday night
when, at the end of another retreat,

Buddhist monks stood in my driveway,
with condescending eyes set upon
my samsaric existence.

2.

It was genetically impossible for George
to be both public and private.

Detroit Stadium
2003
white shirt and tie,
gazing @ the crowd,

he played for the Lions.

3.

Today’s horoscope
Gemini (May 21 – June 21)

A singer/songwriter wrote one big hit,
then chased another bright elusive butterfly,
never to find it. If you sit still

long enough, it won’t be
difficult for the butterfly
to land on your shoulder.