YVETTE NEISSER

SPRING ISSUE #08 POET

Yvette Neisser is the author of two poetry collections, Iron into Flower (2022) and Grip (2011 Gival Press Poetry Award). Her translations from Spanish include South Pole/Polo Sur by María Teresa Ogliastri and Difficult Beauty: Selected Poems by Luis Alberto Ambroggio. Her poems, translations, and essays have appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus, Tikkun, Virginia Quarterly Review, 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium (anthology), and Split This Rock’s The Quarry. Founder of the DC-Area Literary Translators Network, she has taught writing at The George Washington University and The Writer’s Center (Bethesda, Maryland). By day, she works in international development.

EARTHSCAPE 2023

So many things we take for granted:

That whales swim in oceans
and tigers prowl the grasslands.

That winter is cold and icy,
summer hot, autumn color-strewn,
spring lush with blooms.

That deserts are arid,
rainforests humid
and full of herbal cures.

That condors fly over the Andes
and blue macaws through the Amazon.

That hurricanes lash the tropics
and sparrows migrate to southern climes.

Our whole frame of reference is shaken.
Magnolias blossom in winter
and heat waves spill into October,
ice paralyzes Southern states
and bears forget to hibernate.

What will we write in our children’s textbooks?

Will the science of the earth
be replaced by a depiction
of the planet we used to know?

How will we draw the maps?
How will we find our bearings?