What We Take With Us

By Susan Dworski Nusbaum

Through the prisms of love and loss, memory, individual narratives, and the natural world, this collection of poems celebrates the bounty of life—ordinary human experience as an act of discovery. Our daily encounters with the world, universal and particular, are what breathe life into us—what we take with us and ultimately leave behind. The poems examine the common landmarks of our lives, “the careful threads that hold us together,” joy and suffering, passions and disappointments, the search for identity, complexities of nature, growth and decline, the paradoxes of reality. Meaningful gifts abound in the small and often astonishing details which serve to define the human condition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coffeetown Press
• Release date: May 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781603812344

Susan Dworski Nusbaum

Born in Rochester, NY, Susan Dworski Nusbaum received her BA from Smith College and her law degree from the University of Buffalo Law School. She lives in Buffalo, N.Y., where she has worked as a teacher, arts administrator, and most recently as a criminal prosecutor. She has been a frequent participant in the Chautauqua Institution Writers’ Festival and Chautauqua Writers’ Center poetry workshops, and has served on the Board of the Chautauqua Literary Arts Friends. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Connecticut Review, Poetry East, Nimrod International Journal, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Chautauqua, Harpur Palate, Wisconsin Review, The Sow’s Ear, Earth’s Daughters, Artvoice, and The Buffalo News. Her manuscript, What We Take With Us was a finalist in the 2014 Brittingham/Pollack Prize Competition, University of Wisconsin Press.

Book preview

What We Take With Us

Poems

by:

Susan Dworski Nusbaum

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Coffeetown Press

PO Box 70515

Seattle, WA 98127

For more information go to: www.coffeetownpress.com

www.susandworskinusbaum.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Excerpt from Section #10 of Nights and Days of 2007: Autumn, from A Map of the Lost World, by Rick Hilles, © 2012. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press

Cover Painting: Near the Water, by Susan Copley

Cover Design: Sabrina Sun

What We Take With Us

Copyright © 2014 by Susan Dworski Nusbaum

ISBN: 978-1-60381-233-7 (Trade Paper)

ISBN: 978-1-60381-234-4 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014936691

Produced in the United States of America

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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The following poems have also appeared in the publications listed below:

Living Alone

The Connecticut Review

Departures

The Chautauqua Literary Journal

Shore, Mountain

Chautauqua

Learning the Language

Harpur Palate

Psalm

Salt

Nimrod International Literary Review

Grace

Poetry East

The Back Stairs

The Sow’s Ear

Ingathering

Wisconsin Review

For my children and grandchildren

***

To the memory of

Ruth and William Dworski

Sanford Nusbaum

Ronald VanBlargan

***

I am grateful for the guidance, encouragement and friendship of Ansie Baird,

Phyllis Hatfield, Philip Terman, Diana Hume-George, and The Writers’ Center of the Chautauqua Institution

1

Psalm

Without a word, you did this for me:

gathered my whites, my darks,

spot-cleaned my green sweater, sorted

my underpants, underwire bras, nightgown,

separated out the gray-soled gym socks,

removing crumpled tissues from my black jeans,

turning them inside out, set aside my red blouse

with the pearl buttons for special attention.

All the while I wrote poems upstairs

listening to the whoosh of hot water,

the tumbling of snaps and zippers,

heard you shake out the wrinkles,

your wedding band clinking on the folding table

as you straightened my shoulders, buttoned my fronts,

felt for dampness, tenderly pressing cottons and silks

with your dry hands, as the scent of cleanliness

released from the dryer drifted up the steps.

You let me be; my throat catches in gratitude—

my things laid out on our bed, folded square,

crotches tucked, cups nestled inside one another,

bleached soles matched in pairs