A. Have I once again miraculously turned the corner of belief, climbed out? And for how long this time before the trap-door snare descends to snap the neck back under the forest? So terrifying and cruel the way it just happens, and no one has even spoken a word.
photo of Krysia Jopek by Steve Yau
The Seesaw of Undertow
Now I will be capable of caring for my fellow human, the garden, the seedlings, myself, write again, or doodle philosophically or only in bare color.
But, first, what should I wear to accept the marvel of upright vertical? Can I afford [justify] new shoes? No one will recognize the entirety of the trauma, it can be assumed.
B. Things were very sketchy for a while, you should know. If only I could have thrown the dies upwards to tell you, spell out the odd, unexpected destruction: go no further. The aft self-imposed chaos [an amputation], and the chronic, ever-defiant desire for explanation, the strange beauty of a logic that doesn’t exist.
The gadgets have multiplied while the others were left for dead, sleeping. Strangely some may provide a sense of solace that we are all in this together for a fraction of a second, repentant and brave.
C. I have sewn the holes in the tablecloths that tell the history of the village and its awkward inhabitants: a gossamer thin in the spring just-budded leaves, that astounding inch-worm, chartreuse green from a year ago before so much ice and snow.
I am writing, oddly, to ask you to help me remember [not forget] those pages in the book I tore out and folded, so that you could know and tell me in your own version, your unusual interpretation of the facts.
Maybe sing a background song that is soothing but upbeat—and coax like sudden sunlight over the majestic teal–its constant grandeur yet shifting metronome [through the one hundred and forty four windows], its waves pulsating the distant [key of ] sea.
(c) 2013 by Krysia Jopek
Krysia Jopek’s poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Phoebe, Murmur, Windhover, and Artists & Influence. She has written reviews of poetry for The American Book Review and a review of literary criticism for The Wallace Stevens Journal. Maps and Shadows, her first novel (Aquila Polonica 2010), won a Silver Benjamin Franklin award in 2011 in the category of Historical Fiction. The Glass House of Forgetting, her second novel (literary fiction), is forthcoming.
Crisis Chronicles Cyber Litmag (2008-2015) 
Thank you, John, for appreciating my most recent work. Your work, poetry and CC work, and support of other poetry– is very valuable to many. we all thank you. keep on!
Thank you, Krysia! It’s an honor and great pleasure to feature your work here.