BRIEF BIO -- PEARL STEIN SELINSKY

Raised and educated in New York. Continued education in California.  Retired
from teaching in the Los Angeles School District, 1983 and moved to
Sacramento a few years later.

Master's in Creative Writing.  Won first place in both the Bazzanella and
Room Of One's Own Competitions sponsored by the English department at the
California State University, Sacramento.  Have taken a number of prizes in
poetry competitions. Have also served as a judge in poetry competitions, and
gave an invitational reading at California State University, Sacramento as
part of the annual arts festival in April, 2000.

Published in Vintage 45, in an anthology entitled Only In Her Shoes ,another
anthology entitled: To Honor A Teacher, and the magazines: Poetry (Chicago),
Ekphrasis, Poetry Now, Poet's Guild, Zambomba, 33 Review, , The Prairie
Star, Nostalgia, Mediphors, P.D.Q., and Tule Review,  CQ among others.


 Pyramid

             Inverted, this pyramid stretching to infinity, built obit
     after obit, life becomes a sum of loss plus loss plus loss until in Autumn,
     dressed in purples, reds--sometimes like streaking salmon sunset skies, I
       reach--We reach, enfold and hold each other fast against the enclosing,
        lowering cloud dark wrapping round, holding firmly,            firm,
          osmosi-taking sustenance, each from each,        balancing all the
             while, trying to grasp fast           memory's fading faces as
                   they slide down,
                        away, through and past the tales we tell
                              each other until exhausted, we
                                await the moment when time
                                   will step between our
                                     hearts in one beat
                                      in one flick to
                                       choose, reduce
                                         diminish
                                          two to
                                           one
                                             .
(Appeared in Poetry)


BUSYWORK

We embroider each other on
sheets and towels
Our tongues stitch forget-me-
nots on calendars
as ears listen for the silence
between words.

Our hands flex to grasp
at nothingness
and with our swizzle sticks,
we scratch eternity
on melting ice.

(First Prize - Senior Laureate Competition; Appeared in Hodgepodge & in Golden Words)



I Learn About I Ching

The others in the room
seem to know what's going on...
say fifty-two.

The facilitator gestures, explains:
her words explode,
describe a phallic jointure with Earth-
mother, Gaia.  She tells how
successive generations
climb, ascend
and with each slipping step,
knowing she is there, below
are reassured and willing
to attempt again, again

sometimes digging nails into
the stone, grasping for a hold,
seldom daring to look up, to view
the sun-splashed, dizzied peak.

Lathered in sweat or chilled
by evening's cloud, continuing
to climb and slide again until
at last, the joyful instant when,
breath held against all effort,

the acknowledgment: the goal
never will be gained
and the descent,
a welcomed respite after all.

Copyright PSS, First published in Tule Review

Sounds

 "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
 Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"  William Butler Yeats

When Marie Antoinette sat for
her portrait by Vigee LeBrun,
children at her side,
   neither
woman heard the tumbrils as
they rolled through the
crowd-clamoring streets,
   coming to
collect the queen, the children,
   all the court...

...turn and turn to splash of waves
against the hulls of slavers,
   tempest-strong
as though by design, to drown
the moan of fettered captives
   in the hold...

while, on Aztec avenues
the thunder of a thousand
horse's hooves were heard
for the first time on
   this continent...

and moving on to
silent salvaged photographs
from 1932 or '33, families intact,
   boys and girls
at play, a tennis racket under arm
or running through the splash of
garden hose, never hearing
nearing sounds against the rails
   of boxcars...
until now...
 impelled to wonder
 what rumbles through
  the night
    toward us.

Copyright PSS, First published in the Prairie Star


AVIARY

Nothing good is coming home
to roost.  Those pigeons 
I sent out: love, happy thoughts, 
prayers
 for universal peace
all the feathered messengers 
lost, afloat where winter 
doesn't end and summer closets 
bulge with never-spring and the 
brightest plumage macaws wear.
  
Remembering that someone said 
hope is a thing with feathers,
I put too much faith in faithless 
flocks, doves which never came
bearing laurel leaves nor any signs
of land, 
 not to speak of ostriches 
which were incapable, of course 
of lifting off the ground.  Hopeless, 
heads in sand when anything 
appeared above the grayed horizons...

or, silly humming-birds, their thumb-
size selves engaged in food, food, food--
so quickly fluttering, they're scarcely seen.

All the birds gone, leaving vapid, 
empty sky and me adrift, alone
to bear the weight of air..   

Copyright Pearl Stein Selinsky, Firt published in PDQ