January, 2025

January 1, and, Readers, what to say, to think or feel? Early this fog-bound morning, by the park swings, in the distance a stranger’s child’s cry of salutation become letters– capitalized, exclaimed, glitter on Classic Antique paperstock. And there’s her dad, withdrawn, round-shouldered and kindly figured, as if this minute struck out from a Larkin poem to advise

the new absence   
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind   
While there is still time.

But. To feel? Sadness, regret, loss – the day’s givens — and yet a muted joy, too, verging on hope (AutoCorrected to “averaging”!). And gratitude.  All found in Kim Addonizio’s marvelous poem below:

New Year’s Day

The rain this morning falls
on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell
the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.
The few loves I’ve been allowed

to keep are still sleeping
on the West Coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only
a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,
they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never
spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against
their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,
they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out
on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls
of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons
and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,
and wonder how their lives

have carried them
this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don’t know
why I’m walking out here

with my coat darkening
and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound
I like to hear. I don’t care

where those girls are now.
Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,
and lift my face to it.

Yes – to walk/a little longer in the cold/blessing of the rain – can one honestly wish for more?

And now on a much sadder note from Plume Associate Editor Nancy Mitchell, on the passing of Michael Burkhard, a Plume contributor and so, so much more.

I took this photo of Michael Burkard in August 1997 during a visit to Syracuse. Online, the image is often reversed. We met ten years before at a reading for Michael Waters at Salisbury University where MB would be filling in for Waters while he was on a sabbatical in Greece. Like many women before and after me, I was swept off my feet by his vulnerability, sweetness, and yes, yes, his poems. My kids adored him; he was magical. After a few years, we went our separate ways and weren’t in touch until 1997. I’m grateful we have remained friends since. I’m comforted to know he was surrounded by his loving wife Mary Ruefle and good friends and passed over in peace. Rest easy, Bubs. Thank you. You were/are loved beyond measure.

The One I Called
for Micheal Burkard 1947-2024

Decades ago, I fled my marriage of fifteen years in the middle of an August heat wave and took up in a townhouse within a walk from the small college on Maryland’s eastern shore upon which John Barth had cast a jaundiced gleam of fame in The End of the Road. With the influence of well-established friends, my three heathen children were enrolled in a Catholic school. I accepted a position teaching English competency to students deadheaded to eight-hour, rubber-boots-on-blood-slicked-concrete shifts processing chickens for Frank Perdue. One month in, driving into the path of a Mack truck filled with these chickens presented itself as a perfectly sane and brilliant alternative.

One very late night, I fell to my knees to look out the low open bedroom window. To a full moon silvering the dumpster, to the crickets chipping away the last remnants of summer, to the sea-salted breeze I prayed for relief from the illegible essays pillaring my desk, overflowing laundry hampers, and the kid worries spinning my gut—nothing could persuade my third grader to put his hand to anything other than to slowly roll a pencil up and down his desk (a session with the priest had been scheduled) or stop my daughter’s nightly sobbing no one in fifth grade sat with her at lunch, or distract my first born thirteen-year-old from exploring the endless etching possibilities of a sharp sewing needle on his skin.  Fool! the husband had shouted after me, and a fool I was. I had not counted the cost; I could not do it. But I had to do it; I couldn’t go back, and we had to eat.

The following yellow-leaf-lit October evening, the good angel floated into the last poem of a mutual friend’s reading, trailing the belt of his stained trench coat. Leaning on the frame of the door I’d chosen the chair closest to for a quick exit, he blew steam from a Styrofoam cup. During the applause, as I moved to slip out, he turned; my shoulder bumped his hand, and a wave of warm coffee broke against my white blouse. After a flurried exchange of So sorry…no, my fault, he attempted to blot my dress with the hem of his coat stopping short at my breasts. Then, introductions, sticky handshakes, and his accepted offer to walk me home.

At an AA meeting, the third one today was why he was late, and I didn’t flinch; our mutual friend had given me an outline: newly, shakily sober, flush with an NEA, he was free to write and housesit while this friend and his wife would be in Greece during an upcoming sabbatical.

His breath was an elixir of stale coffee, cigarettes, and Beechnut gum, and when he leaned in to kiss me, I didn’t resist.

The wise ones solemnly caution the newly sober and newly separated against “embarking” on a relationship for at least a year. In our defense, rather than embark we simply drifted; my bed our boat, the night our dark sea becalmed by my sleeping children’s breath. My only thought of the future was where he’d next put his lips.

And so it went; under the shelter of his wings, we dwelt. Between loads of laundry, he wrote and swept. My kids and I came home to a clean house, warm fish sticks, and pizza. When my ex showed up on my doorstep drunk, swinging an enormous gourd and bellowing obscenities, the good angel led us out the back door to a neighbor’s house where he called the police, then a cab to take us to a movie.

The townhouse rules forbade four-legged pets, so he gave the kids Porgy and Bess, parakeets who flew now and then about the house, until through an open door they slipped, above and beyond the kids’ tearful pleas. If I’d known anything about the nature of angels, I would have recognized this sign that he too would soon fly away. Maybe he took off to answer a more urgent prayer, or maybe his work with us was done; by the lowly prod of rote and repetition I’d pushed my students through the bureaucratic loophole to graduation; my kids finished the school year with decent grades and played with friends on softball teams and swam happily in the pool. It was June.

Nancy Mitchell

Ah. And Oh..

Let’s see, anything else? Ah – this month’s cover art: from Bethany Eden Jacobson’s haunting Ode to a Cemetery, with text by Cole Swensen.

And before I take my leave, thanks as well, to all at Plume who work so diligently, so generously, to make each month’s Plume: Amanda Newell, Nancy Mitchell, John Ebert, Ramón García, Amy Beeder, Chard deNiord, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Joseph Campana, Sally Bliumis-Dunn, Frances Richey, Timothy Liu, and Jane Zwart. And to you, readers, the same: gratitude and best wishes for the coming year!

Finally, as usual, some – just two this time — recent/present/forthcoming titles from Plume contributors:

Christopher Buckley                  SPREZZATURA

C. Dale Young                            Building the Perfect Animal

That’s it for now, I think

As always – I do hope you enjoy the issue!

Daniel Lawless

Editor, Plume