Georgia Popoff assumed the role of Managing Editor in 2010. Her newest work is The Doom Weaver (Main Street Rag, 2008). These vivid and direct portraits cover a wide range, including still-lives and landscapes, family stories, and remembrance of past loves, often with a suggestion of oriental form and sensibility. Some of these engaging poems reflect the poet’s background in performance poetry while offering “canny assessments of life and lives, love and family” (Charles Martin).
The Doom Weaver by Georgia A. Popoff
All of the following have been featured in The Comstock Review
On Prayer Rugs
Squat at his loom, the rugmaker readies
for the incessant chant of weaving.
He adjusts the warp, fierce fingers tighten
ordinary sisal into rainbow’s backbone.
He has selected wools from sheep grazed
on spring shoots, spun by virgins,
steeped in dyes drawn from beet,
onion skin, pomegranate, and blueberry.
He will blend mimosa silk into the weft,
gold and silver to exalt prayer.
His intention is service, meditation
at the first sail of shuttle from left to right.
The weaver plucks and twists tuffs
of color into the map of God.
Set before him, the devotion of each
who will sit in supplication.
His mind must not wander to the curve
beneath black cotton, the temptation
of woman as she prays. He must allow
no sense of her kohl-lined eyes, or her flesh
untainted and soft, rested on blue and burgundy,
gold woven at his hand, so delicate
no itch could distract her renewal, no burn
would grace the small of her sacred back.
He must refuse the dream nectar
hidden in her lips, that tiny cask,
after her patchouli bath, her blood
warm relief.
Bella Luna Faccia Stellato
A veil whispers cloud.
Rain more than dew.
Mourning doves temper
Dawn’s brash roosters.
Round as a communion wafer,
her right eye gleans knowledge.
Sister moon, not blood
but certain twin.
Many cousins root in the Tuscan sky,
seeded from different limbs
of family tree; surname
Nova, Quasar, Dwarf-White.
This zenith is wild with heart.
My face mirrors moon, the peace
of fireflies bright as planets,
beneath my open window.
The Hopeful Dialect of Marriage
I dream of Florence:
hot Sunday morning full of an alien language
thick as apricot jam.
The air. laden with church bells and passion
would slip over pima cotton seeds, hand-sewn
eyelet gracing their hems; a delicate sun
(gold as a wedding ring)
squeezing through shutter slats
making my skin, the whole room, art.
I conjure garlic and dense coffee
wafting in from a neighbor’s kitchen.
There would be window boxes
brilliant with geraniums,
and angels everywhere.
Angels in the architecture,
fluttering around red tile rooftops,
angel wings kissing in the corners of frescoes.
In Florence, everyone must acclimate
to living with angels.
Some dreams I’ve yet to sleep
my way into: an intimation of husband,
the secrets the hairs on our thighs
would whisper to each other
beneath the cool breath of sheets as we
drift into our singular syllables of starlight.
and basil from the garden
riding a wisp of moon glazed with the glow
of Firenze.
Georgia A. Popoff is a community poet, performer, educator, spoken word producer, Member of the Board and Managing Editor of The Comstock Review.
A teaching poet in schools and community settings, Georgia is the Writer in Residence for the Middletown, NY, school district and provides professional development to many districts and conferences throughout NYS and the United States. She has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and web publications. Her first collection is Coaxing Nectar from Longing (Hale Mary Press 1997). Her second book, The Doom Weaver, was released in Spring 2008 by Main Street Rag Publications. Georgia is a board member of the Association of Teaching Artists and a faculty member of the Downtown Writer’s Center, the Syracuse chapter of the YMCA national Writers Voice program. In addition to her creative writing, she has published critical writing in the Comstock Review, NY Foundation for the Arts “Chalkboard,” and the Teaching Artist Journal. In the mid-90s, Georgia was active in the Poetry Slam movement, competing in the National Poetry Slam in 1994 and 1995, was an MC in the 1998 Nationals, and served as the CNY Slam Master for more than 2 years.