Diane R. Wiener - Wordgathering – Syracuse University

Fire Horse Song

(listen to the poem, read by the author)

Sixty years ago,
my mother made her body a house.
Was that when I became sensate or just sensory?
I’m told my lungs thought to blow out the windows.
Instead, I turned around and didn’t look back.

Yahrzeit

(listen to the poem, read by the author)

Note: “Yahrzeit” appeared originally on the author’s personal website.

you know already
the Green Man will be 101
on the 21st of Cheshvan

when the clocks
pretend to fall back
when our calendar
turns one

and I may not cut my hair
after all I didn’t
go to the protest
but was welcomed

not in my name

in the real world
where attic insulation
will be deepened

I’ll make sure
the ceiling falls
down on nobody

a year ago in
their calendar
you knew that last
early morning

when you tossed me
a string I couldn’t
tug back
with words pulling colors
through a dark sky in our
synesthesia shared silence

he couldn’t let me help
with a legacy I didn’t ask for
no one could stop the filth
or the piles then

or before
he sat dead
near a dirty tallis

I told him
though I didn’t have to
that I called 50 times

we all know
it doesn’t matter

you left right before
your favorite number
after telling me you tried
to love me as best you could

I believed you
then it all stopped and
he opened the window

you were right
there’s no one to ask

somehow
there’s a new Beatles song
I’ll bet you heard it

tell my father
to whom I also didn’t
get to say good-bye
that I said hello

Gutted

(listen to the poem, read by the author)

A pear watches the walls fall and floors split
The bay window the only one left
A piano in pieces at the bottom of a dumpster
And stumps where there had been blue spruce

About the Author

Diane R. Wiener (she/they) became Editor-in-Chief of Wordgathering in January 2020. The author of The Golem Verses (Nine Mile Press, 2018), Flashes & Specks (Finishing Line Press, 2021), and The Golem Returns (swallow::tale press, 2022), Diane’s poems also appear in Nine Mile Magazine, Wordgathering, Tammy, Queerly, The South Carolina Review, Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest, Diagrams Sketched on the Wind, Jason’s Connection, the Kalonopia Collective’s 2021 Disability Pride Anthology, eMerge, For The Birds Arts & Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Diane’s creative nonfiction appears in Stone Canoe, Mollyhouse, The Abstract Elephant Magazine, Pop the Culture Pill, eMerge, and Beyond Words. Her flash fiction appears in Ordinary Madness; short fiction is published in A Coup of Owls. Diane served as Nine Mile Literary Magazine’s Assistant Editor after being Guest Editor for the Fall 2019 Special Double Issue on Neurodivergent, Disability, Deaf, Mad, and Crip poetics. She has published widely on Disability, education, accessibility, equity, and empowerment, among other subjects. A proud Neuroqueer, Mad, Crip, Genderqueer, Ashkenazi Jewish Hylozoist Nerd, Diane is honored to serve in the nonprofit sector. You can visit Diane online at: https://dianerwiener.com.