Chani Zwibel (Western Voices 2023)

Bio: Chani Zwibel (she/her/hers) is originally from Elizabeth, a small town in rural Western Pennsylvania. She now lives and writes just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author of Cave Dreams to Star Portals, Star Portals to Cash Registers, Cash Registers to Cave Dreams, and Circles of Roses Forever. She has been published in numerous publications online and in print. Connect at chanizwibel on Instagram and/or Chani Zwibel on Facebook.

 

A BIRD NEVER BEFORE SEEN, YET ODDLY RECOGNIZABLE

(inspired by the Grimm’s fairy tales, The Singing Bone and The Juniper Tree)

Bits of bone, no epitaph, a random rough stone, a spindly tree, a broken jaw, open socket roots, a bracket of bicuspids

Lovely white bones, lily-white bones, little scattered white bones, gathered in a handkerchief, laid in a shallow grave under the favored tree, the moniker of the body forgotten, 

A fluttering of wings and a stirring of the earth, the smallest bones coming to light, poking through the ground, the perfect shape for a flute, or appearing in the tree as a bird singing a song that will not be denied.

***

 

A KEY THE SIZE OF A FINGER BONE/BLUEBEARD’S WIFE FINDS RED

(inspired by several Grimm’s fairytales: Fitcher’s Bird, Bluebeard, The Castle of Murder)

She has the key, a key the size of her pinky finger, she but doesn’t dare open the door. The key is the only way in or out. No light shines out from the keyhole. It is a dark little envelope. She is afraid of the room but doesn’t know why. Yet it calls her. She opens every door in the castle. The keys jingle in her apron pocket, metal muffled by linen. She passes the forbidden room she can’t stop thinking about. Don’t open, said her handsome lord. She wants to open. She has the key, the key the size of her small finger bone; she dares at last to open the door.

A coppery smell all over the red room, a copper basin full of crimson blood. A porcelain bathtub full of white, dead flesh, arms and legs, floating in blood. Blood running down the greasy walls, bits of hair and brain on the wall, a clutch of skulls grinning, gap-toothed jaws open wide with final screams.

She runs from the room, but before she can, one drop of blood, one little rusty stain, marks the tip of the key where she turned it in the lock, where she broke the scarlet seal to the bloody red room. And her heart turns as black, as blue-black as lord’s long beard.

She knows she’ll join her sisters soon.

***

 

BLUE WAX PSALM

Break the blue wax seal. Remove the parchment from the envelope. Read the flowing script. See where the writer blotted the black ink. Breathe in the scent left on the page, his tobacco-whiskey-leather-clove, her lavender-rose-powder-mint. Each word is a fiery revelation, an ecstasy of messages in-coming. Each word is a baptism, a submersion in the coldest lake water, clear and bracing, life-affirming. Each word is a green shoot bursting up through damp earth in early spring, a calling-forth from the grave, a resurrection miraculous, the heavy stone rolled aside. Each word is a zephyr, a breath of the Spirit, a still-small voice, a honeysuckle-scented breeze, a prayer so intimate the angels repeat it in dove-soft whispers. The deep blue wax of the seal sliced with the silver letter-opener is a message of dusk. The envelope and the parchment, bits of dusk and paper. The ink, a promise of how dark the coming night. The words, every word, a psalm of dusk. 

***

---

Western Voices 2023 :: Setu, February 2023

Chani Zwibel (Western Voices 2022)

Bio: Chani Zwibel (she/her/hers) is originally from Elizabeth, a small town in rural Western Pennsylvania. She now lives and writes just outside of Atlanta, in Smyrna, Georgia. She graduated from Agnes Scott College in 2011 and is currently pursuing an MLIS at Valdosta State University. She is the author of Cave Dreams to Star Portals, Star Portals to Cash Registers, and Cash Registers to Cave Dreams. She has been published in numerous publications online and in print. Connect at chanizwibel on Instagram and/or Chani Zwibel on Facebook.

 

SAVED

Can anything fallen be saved? The twigs bound in the empty circle of the birds’ nest slowly slipped the weaving of the once-so-careful beak and retreated to the forest floor, to the company of moss. The downy pods of the dandelion floated free a moment and then nestled into warm, dark bed of earth to wait for a call to wake them from slumber. For what is the end if not the beginning? Can anything fallen down be saved? The hollow bowl of the oak stump becomes a cauldron of rainwater, a mirror reflecting the crowns of trees born of the acorns it cast as sacrifices to the ground, its fearless orphans now the heirs of sky. What gathers in this place are all the keys in the kingdom of things forgotten: a marble rolled from a packrat’s hoard, a bone-white button popped from a picnicking lover’s blouse, a broken silver chain dropped by a crow. Can anything fallen down ever be saved?

***

 

STARS, FLOWERS, OURS

How is it that we know the stars? We see them in the veil of night and count them treasures. What lights the sky we always praise. The ancient tongues recall our far-off home. Such as these burning palaces are now, we once were. Fear and awe lie next to each other inside the cave where the oldest handprints smudge the walls. Running horses flicker film-like in the torchlight. The iron in our blood sings to the stars. The sunflower’s round face gazes out with love upon its namesake. The lilacs bloom and their scent carries our memory like bees’ fuzzy legs carry clumps of pollen. From one ephemeral summer day to another, and then the drawing down of dusk. But always we know the stars.

***

 

A QUIET SPELL

Lavender and rosemary jostle their fragrant arms. Bumblebees dip and bob over their blossoms. A gecko, a miniature dragon, shows his orange frill, a proud display in sunshine. Bits of quartz crystal glint and glimmer. Dragonflies dart past, buzzing bits of iridescence. A single spider spins a careful web. Magic is happening here, moments from the front steps. Hyacinth, crocus, and daffodils push toward the light, break free of earth, and shout a rainbow in the grass.

***

---

Setu, April 2022

Chani Zwibel: Poetry (Western Voices 2021)

Bio: Chani Zwibel is a poet originally from Elizabeth, a small town in rural Western Pennsylvania. She now lives and writes in Smyrna, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. She is the author of Cave Dreams to Star Portals, Star Portals to Cash Registers, and Cash Registers to Cave Dreams.

 

LETTER HOME TO SISTER

 

Dear Autumn,

I dreamed about coming home,

and now I know.

I want to live in a moss-covered cottage window

where daffodils grow on the bones of an old house,

long ago buried by forest

in the wild mountain backyard of our grandparents’ house.

Even though in Pennsylvania,

it’s always cold and rainy,

I still want to save our history. 

My mind recalls a family of turkey

crossing the road next to a graveyard.

Hills and hollows crisscrossed with bad back roads full of potholes.

Northern winter gives me a deep mourning,

cold in my bones and in my heart. 

Let’s take a walk to where the old ghosts stay

and take pictures and wait

for the green snake to slither through the grass,

a signal to go. 

Believe in the last of the trees

and we might be able to save the fairies we used to see. 

Take a truck with good tires to get there.

Long after we’re gone, the stars will tumble on,

reflected in the creek. 

 

 

GRIEF AS LANDSCAPE, WITH TWO FEMALE CARDINALS

 

Grief is a landscape,

a long field,

a hilly terrain.

As I traverse it,

I cannot tell

how far I’ve come,

or how far still I’ve yet to travel.

When it’s a summer field,

mirage lines waver in the distance,

mimic far off water,

as each step takes me no closer

to where they cease their teasing dance

and become real springs. 

When it’s a winter field,

wet with cold rain, glistening all in silver,

long grasses, hung with dewdrops like glass beads,

I wander.

My grandmothers are two cardinals,

dusty red coats

flitting over sodden brush pile

landing on drenched metal fence.

 

SOOTHING

 

I’d like my life

to be like a Bob Ross painting-

Clear coat of slick liquid

applied so every brushstroke,

loaded with color

would go on

as an application in ease,

full of happy little trees. 

 

Then, when you have

a perfect, pleasant valley,

scrape away some paint with a knife

and drop a cabin down-

A dwelling place for your dreams,

layered brown paint making old, wood beams.

---

Western Voices 2021 :: Setu, February 2021

Chani Zwibel (Western Voices 2020)

Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar

Bio: Chani Zwibel is the author of Cave Dreams to Star Portals and Star Portals to Cash Registers. She is an associate editor with Madness Muse Press. She graduated from Agnes Scott College in 2011. She was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but now dwells in Marietta, Georgia, with her husband and their dog.

Grief Stages

In respect for the dead we will now have a final brief visitation. Please come in this room is quite small.  Bid your last farewells.  How do undertakers have such bright tropical fish? Someone must undertake the task of mourning. Someone must devote their lives to the dead.  A perfect circle never ends. But there is no perfection here, only a staged resemblance.   

Grey cloak of cloud, weeping slow rain, observing the sun, ride upon a black steed to the edge of darkness, find me here. Serving the whims of the monster at large, the demon in the kingdom of dust. A blur of faces caught between the fear of dying young and the desire to save money. The dark shadow calls many to its service, although few understand its ways. It feasts on mischief. Do not despair. Do not drown in sorrows. Its ancient tie to this land, its old hold upon a bloody tree stump, long dissolved into the earth keeps it here, but it recognizes when you are of the light. It begs your service as a fence, needs tenders at the gates of darkness.

Despair likes to squat on my shoulder digging its talons into my back, and it whispers into my ear how I’ll never be good enough. I can smell the hot stench of its breath. I try to shake it off, but it is comfortable in its roost with its claws tangled in my hair, confident it will keep me where it wants me forever.  I fight it, infused with living, ebullient, light turned-on, energy burning like an ancient sun. 

Mother and Father, a brief sketch

Lay-minister, prophetess, tiny dancer, screaming, crying, weeping, praying, hands in dishwater, garden earth, folded laundry, vacuum cleaner, sweeper song, lemon furniture polish, hurricane lamps, rose-painted domes.

“Dig a hole in the backyard and throw me in it”, hands grimed tar black smell of fish and steel, steering wheel, screeching tires, chew wad at gum line, brown spit in iced-tea carton lemon-tea-tobacco, brown beer bottles. Stacked in recycling bins, crates of emptied addiction.

College Educated

You can understand

Only a shadow

Of what is:

When the dinosaur comes out of the forest, you shoot him.

Certain objects are worth

More than others.

Far from home, I study new education.

I know song writers and linguists, journalists, scientists, women of renown. 

We are all slowly dying by increments.

I learn a desire for a modern world:

Shiny, new and geometric, a buzzing place, with plenty of machines.

Setu, April 2020

Western Voices: Chani Zwibel

Bio:

Chani Zwibel is the author of Cave Dreams to Star Portals, published by Alien Buddha Press. She is an associate editor with Madness Muse Press. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College, who was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but now dwells in Marietta, Georgia, with her husband and their dog. She enjoys writing poetry after nature walks and daydreaming.

PAINFUL HEIRLOOMS

Every Jew harbors horrors,

genetic memories like microscopic suitcases,

left to discover when cleaning

 our grandparents’ attic.                                                                                                    

A hump-backed steamer trunk,

brass-hinges brine corroded,

creaks open to reveal

 pogroms packed in silk purses,

inquisitions stashed in suit pockets,

diaspora internal like a swallowed emerald,

and all these passed down generations.

I found mine under Papa’s bed

while cleaning his room

after his death:

 a battered, mold-bloom-flowered, carboard suitcase,

locked,

 some small unknown thing,

 (a finger bone?)

 (a rusted ring?)

 inside rattling.

PERSPECTIVE

Who minds the thoughts of water bears?

After all, this is their planet, not ours.

Crude sketches of cosmos,

 cretins carrying commerce.

This abyss my vista.

Everybody’s trying to sell you

everything from crystals to colonics,

 from Beet Juice to Jesus,

and if any of it works,

 it’s mostly placebo.

The true kingdom of God

 and the keys to health

are inside you;

even the water bears know it:

 perfectly imperfect, flawed but fine.

Now don’t get me wrong,

Beet Juice is good for your blood,

 and Jesus will wash you in His blood,

 but it’s the sales pitch that irritates.

No one begs a backyard violet

to be more.

Ask the water bears.

GARMENTS BOXED WITH LAVENDER

All hazel my mask of tears, still better than yours: your empty hood a hollow socket. You might chase me through the wood all fox, all bobcat, all grey muzzled wolf, but you are an old nightmare, a bag of forgotten talismans: a pen knife, a safety razor, a cap gun.

In the crimson velvet sleeves go the roses. In the pressed leather box go the tulips. In the crème valise go the peonies. In the locked steamer trunk go the lilacs.

My darling, my lovely, my dangerous, my quarantine, my pill box, my puff adder, my sweet kiss, my absinthe, my night-lord, my dark king, please tell me. What stones are loose in the labyrinth? How much does it take to tease out the trick of being rapt and wrapped in satin? Underpinned in whale bone, corset stays, hair caged, and clasped in pearl-headed comb tines I writhe.

What price shall I pay for this revelation: a gold coin, an emerald, a white orchid?

Run the tests for blotting paper, rubbing alcohol, and vanishing ink. Check coffers and coiffures. Be sure to charge admittance.

Did not discover the devil coiled serpentine, laying lithe inside the leather strong box. Eschewed the viper’s fatal kiss in favor of a risk, kept hidden like a secret pleasure.

Did not uncover the rosewood casket bearing spices bound over the caravan camel’s hump, swayed over a thousand miles of desert. Who polishes the silver brackets of the pearl-inlaid alabaster on the moon’s horns?

Has mold been growing in all my books? Surely not, surely not, whispers the tea kettle. Little white moths in the mimosa blossoms are small folded flags fluttering in summer-storm-dark air.

---

Western Voices :: Setu, February 2019 

Poetry: Chani Zwibel

Chani Zwibel

RAIN AND STARS

The rain tumbles
into the rain barrel
as the storm spends its rage
in a watery torrent.
We are full of the world,
and the world is full of us.
You cannot long sustain the endings,
 for they keep coming; it is a part of all we are.
 The old hound is outside howling at a stranger.
 It is a dark night, alone in the country,
 the black sky all full of pale, luminous stars,
and meteor showers streak across
 the ink of the infinite.
“Falling stars” they call it.
The most romantic turn of phrase
for what teacher says
 is a scientific fact
 of burning rock falling
through our atmosphere.
Tumbling water or raining fire,
still we wait.

THE DINNER TABLE AND THE SPIDERWEB

“I want you to know I met Jesus Christ last night”
Said my non-religious Jewish father at our humble dinner table.
My ten-year-old brown eyes lifted lids wide,
expanded into my forehead,
and my baby-teeth lined mouth,
moving mechanically jammed, ceased,
Mom popped “What?” like a thick hiccup.
Dad smiled “In a dream”.

“How did you know it was Jesus?” Mom wanted to know.
“I felt a profound sense of peace.” Dad answered.
“What did He look like?” Mom wanted to know.
“He had a shaved head and he was standing in the sand.” Dad answered.
Dad continued. “He told me things I’m not allowed to tell you, but everything’s going to be ok. You’re a strong woman.”
That’s all Dad would say about the encounter.
Later, after the accident,
we would see a spider web spun
with a Star of David and a Cross inside it,
geometry of the spirit in nature a comfort.

WALKS WITH GRANDMA

PART ONE
Grandma never learned to drive, because her mother had been killed in a car accident. The traumas that happen to us make us who we are. It didn’t matter, though, because she had friends within walking distance, and when I was a very small child, she’d put me in this antique blue baby buggy with little white portholes cut in the sides and big white rubber wheels. She’d walk me down the hollow to see her friend Pat, who lived in the house at the bottom of skillet hill, and Pat had a fish pond that fascinated me, a blue concrete circle where beneath lily pads fish lazily swam. Weird destiny-this spot would later take my father’s life. Long after Pat had moved out, or died, I can’t remember now, a family moved in who had two little girls. Those girls had restless nightmares, thought they saw a man out by where the fish pond had been. The family moved. Tragedies and traumas get caught in the fabric of a place. They stay, energy burnt into the ground and the creek flowing around it.

PART TWO
Coffee and cigarette smoke make a potent blend of scent, instant memory recall, of a kitchen where my Grandma sits and chats with the wife of the meanest hillbilly on the hill. Her daughter is confined to a wheel chair, but she has a coloring book and we talk a little bit. Grandma listens more than she talks, cigarette smoke curling out of her mouth and around her fingertips. This woman always seems overwrought, stressed beyond her means, harried by her husband, a crueler bastard there never was, but her still her man for all that.  Years later, Bucky’s stepson would murder him, and they’d have to tear the house down rather than sell it. Old curses on that dark hill, always hungry for blood.

THE WRITER

 My stories, break open from a place inside me
 where I make the rules, and no one brings the rain but me.
  Edges of this vast world cut too sharp sometimes.
 My fingers bleed.
When I am giving you these stories,
 they are a rising smoke
 billowing from the fire within me.
I am not trying to show off.
 I am giving you the full report.
You will have to find your way through the forest paths on your own.
 When you reach the top of the hill,
 where they put a metal tower
 to house the power lines,
 you will notice the fox scat
 and feel nature’s quiet
 but powerful attraction.
 We are all part of the sacred rhythm
 but we always forget to dance.
  God always speaks to us,
but we are always turn our heads away and laugh.
Search the core of your being
for what is just and good.
 You will find it,
 but you must plumb great depths,
 for it is only in the abyss
where the creatures glow with their own light.

Setu, October 2018

Poetry: Chani Zwibel

Chani Zwibel

COAL DUST AND RAIN

No bottle contains the elixir,

except the bowl of the loamy earth.

Scent of rain carries me to Pineview Drive,

 a back road local old timers call “Mustard holler.”

Scents of wood-smoke speak the names of the dead:

ghosts of coal dust.

The abandoned mine is not far.

Cross the wooden bridge across the creek,

 Find ranch-style house my first home,

 nestled between two willows and a wooded hill.

Hear the crack of rifles from the gun range down the path.

Snow Drops prim white petals peeking

through clumps of frost, cautiously flag coming Spring.

Mourning doves’ sighs beckon me to wake.

Garden spider’s dew-wet web boasts

 an eight-legged emerald on a string of diamonds.

Minnows dart and flicker

through bars of sun falling in the creek.

Iridescent dragon flies buzz, skim water’s surface.

Trees whisper in the breeze,

green tresses of willow falling

 around me like a veil as I braid them.

A spring flows from the rock

and spills down the hill,

little waterfall in my personal paradise.

An outcrop of rock is my throne,

fit for a queen in her sylvan kingdom.

Light rain pitter-patters.

 Droplets plunk down

in dusty brown earth.

Scent rises, beckons. 

SASSAFRAS AND THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL

In the woods behind my house on Pineview Drive

were trails leading to the gun range,

with on power lines on top the hill.

 Papa took me on walks in the woods.

 My grandfather, his bald head covered in a ball cap,

white beard trimmed close, had the soul of a perpetual country boy.

 As a young man, he fought the Nazis in Germany and France,

 but I knew him as an old man enamored of nature, in the Pennsylvania woods.

Rays of sun slanted down through trees’ leaves, spotlights of gold upon the dusty brown ground.

“Sassafras looks like a mitten. You can make tea from the roots and you can chew on the bark.”

He cut a twig with his pocket knife and gave it to me.

It tasted wild and sweet.

Then he offered me a stick of his wintergreen gum,

carefully stowing the wrapper in his pocket, and we kept walking.

Papa talked about the predators that lived in the forest,

the creatures I should avoid:

Bears, bobcats, foxes, raccoons in the day-time, and snakes.

 Most creatures would avoid you if you made enough noise when you were walking.

 “Papa, what is the most dangerous animal?”

 He paused only a moment before he said

“The one who goes on two legs:

Man.” 

HURRICANE SKY

Roof-rattling thunder and apocalyptic lightning ceased.

 We opened our door to peak.

From our front porch we saw storm-green air,

ice chips of hail lying on the flattened grass.

 Dissolving clouds rolled away,

while the plum tree shrugged a sigh

to see the vein-blue underbelly of a storm receding.

Dad said he remembered the hurricane sky

 he and his brothers saw out the second story window

of their house in the city when he was young.

He remembered the pallid color of it.

He said just like this storm we’d faced,

it too, curled up its claws, packed up its winds,

 and left behind a deeper calm, like so many bits of hail. 

SITTING WITH MY DYING GRANDMOTHER

I become detached.

The woman lying in this hospital bed

in my grandparents’ living room

 is not the sassy old lady in long black sweaters

 who never yelled back when my grandfather bellowed,

but would whip him the bird instead.

Waiting for the reaper,

watching the catheter bag fill,

I catch the scent of the fire

 that has been smoking in the burn-barrel

since I got here.

 Outside is occurring

an immolation of every dusty relic

 and heap of junk

 piled like grief in stacks of trash:

old, moldy carpets,

and plywood houses

 built for long-ago dead cats.

Earlier, attempting to push the time forward,

 I had cleaned a shelf of books

 covered so deep in grime

 it had begun to regroup

into clump formations, little hills.

All the cleaning must have riled up the old gods,

 because a spider the size of Allegheny County

 came out to brood

and show her disapproval.

This is not my grandmother dying beside me,

 fragile paper-thin skin around tiny brittle bones.

This is not the world slowly curling to an end

 like the fungus-rotted ingrown nail

on an old woman’s toe.

I am not here,

and my grandmother is not here,

and only the fractured light in this room

is slowly dying.  

DOOR MARKED “DON’T KNOW”

The world is not growing more evil

 it has always been as such, only now more eyes pay it heed and feed the beast with their sorrow.

Will we cling forever to this cursed clay ball?

Frustration creeps in while doing housework.

Sit cleanly upon my countertop, you twice-washed silverware and be content.

On the night Christ spent in Hell, do you have sympathy for Satan?

The shift comes at the edge of the abyss,

Dark channels in the ocean where underwater aliens sit and wait

Do they dream of us in fairytales and run us in their science fiction films?

Names don’t matter in the realm of the dead.

There are millions of doors to anywhere.

Those meant for you open without keys, and you drift right through.

It is Schrodinger’s paradox: it is, and it is not.

Everything you could ever believe is simultaneously real and not real.

Such realities exist, and we make them real by believing either one or the other.

 The door marked heaven, the door marked hell, or the door marked don’t know.

Setu, April 2018

Chani Zwibel

Chani Zwibel is a graduate of Agnes Scott College, was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but now dwells in Marietta, Georgia, with her husband and their dog. She is an associate editor with Madness Muse Press. She enjoys writing poetry after nature walks and daydreaming.

Recent Publications include:

The Dope Fiend Daily April 16, 2018, Dissident Voice April 8, 2018, Oracle 20/20 April 1, 2018, Advaitam Speaks Literary- Vol. 2 Issue 1-2018 (February 25), Witches and Pagans: Natural Paganism Issue 35, February 2018, Madness Muse Press: Mermaid Mirror: An Anthology of Women Writers, February 2018,The Literary Hatchet Issue 19, Jan 2018, Dissident Voice Dec 31, 2017,Ariel Chart Dec 5, 2017,Killjoy litmag #Catastrophe Dec 1, 2017

Authors A-Z