POEMS: Two works by Libby Bernardin

On Waking With Anxiety

By Libby Bernardin

The Pacific could belch up a tsunami
churned from the sea’s floor

a roar of sucking air pulls water back
as it meets shore—

you could be caught unaware
by this wave on its way

to pound a village to bits
you rowing frantically away from it

worse than my ten-year-old
self trying to run from the mad dog

when he dug his teeth into my heel,
followed by three weeks of daily shots

in my stomach, the  twenty-first
the only time I cried—

but clearly, we don’t have a tsunami today,
even the bay is calm, a boat sails

leisurely on the inland waterway—
relax, eat a hamburger at the Marina,

bow to ineluctable fate,
ask what you will of sea.

Nothing to it

By Libby Bernardin

Nothing to it,

forgetting yesterday:

I blow it like kisses to past phantoms

what could it want from me?

I close my eyes and squeeze my lips

to what comes creeping in a moment’s

lapsed contemplation—

I won’t take back all that burned

swiftly as paper—let the flame shimmer

       unshackled, a dalliance, nothing more.

Libby Bernardin’s first full collection is Stones Ripe for Sowing (Press 53, 2018). She has two chapbooks, The Book of Myth (SC Poetry Initiative, 2009) and Layers of Song (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Poems have appeared in numerous journals. In 2015, she won the SC Poetry Society Forum Prize.  Her Poem “Transmigration” winner of the NC Poetry of Witness Award published in Pinesong, was nominated for a 2017 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Georgetown and is a Life Member of the Board of Governors of the South Carolina Academy of Authors.

• Have a comment?  Send to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com