Dore Kiesselbach | Rattle: Poetry

Dore Kiesselbach

GOLDILOCKS ZONE

After five clear nights below zero we take our

skates to the lake. Scant snow this winter

means unsquare miles shed shine in front

of us, not just the area normally groomed

for the public. Because the surface of

a lake is not still as it freezes we bump

over ripples and ridges and can look

down through the ice to broad, frosted

mushrooms of gas that won’t reach

the surface for months. As our legs

adjust to that knobbiness we look

up more often and longer to trees

beyond the shoreline and the paths

we’ll take through them when leaves

have returned. Autos glint the ring

road and beyond them a city here and

there looks emerald in morning light.

Beneath alternating, parallel grooves

most of the lake remains liquid. When

it sways against its thick roof, an old

child murmurs and groans in her sleep.

—Poets Respond
February 26, 2017

[download audio]

__________

Dore Kiesselbach: “I’ve always loved the term ‘Goldilocks Zone,’ its combination of science and fairy-tale. This week’s discovery of three planets occupying that charmed region around a close-by star inspired me to sketch my own wintertime experience of a world that’s ‘just right.’” (website)

Dore Kiesselbach

MIGNON

I’ll never have a better steak though the meat

could be more tender and my crooked

alley view of the Acropolis less obscured.

That it cost three bucks and came with good

fries by the scad and a chipped bottle

of local wine further predisposes

me to forgive the Greeks for letting

their civilization fall to pieces.

The caraway seeds of destruction

were present, I’ve read,

in the pillared shrine.

Between real and seeming

symmetry, they skewed

the lines for their eyes,

not hers for whom they

once had named themselves,

optical refinements,

the experts say: 70,000

noninterchangeable parts

and hardly a right angle

in the place. My favorite

distortion would have

been the worst—entasis,

the bulging in the column

meant to show it’s bearing

weight. Consult tremorless

butchers protected from time.

It’s where choice cuts come

from when stone is on the line.

—Poets Respond
August 23, 2015

[download audio]

__________

Dore Kiesselbach: “An absurdist take on Greece’s economic plight, tracing it back to the hypothetically deliberate aestheticization of Athenian religious observance.” (website)