Poetry
February Ghazals
1
Shoving my shoulder against a door that says PULL;
on my way out I’ll remember to try pulling.
Back home in the suburbs I was sapped by the carpets.
Now there is nothing soft enough in my apartment.
The sky was my own though it has its law.
Forever unfair are the uses of love.
First God said fiercely, YOU CAN’T LOVE EVERYONE.
Then, hang it up, Sally, you can’t love EVERYone.
I can leave a start sailing toward its lost name,
put perpendicular memory drops down.
2
Fear between a thousand specks in the huge painting:
What lines might they form if my eye is not careful.
Noah’s was a lovely story for children
Until I was so many bodies in the water.
They didn’t stage an accident they arranged
for an accident with the cameras rolling.
You had to know the blackened heart in me was yours.
I’ll find your muddled fingerprints are everywhere.
At the emergency entrance to Saint Vincent’s
Hospital, there is always blood on the sidewalk.
3
Jacob ran a matchbox truck over my toes
up one leg, across the knees, down the other leg.
The passport clerk interrupts: the emergency
is not someone sick but your flight leaves Friday.
When her little girl cries and Dianna asks
What’s the matter, she answers I CRYING!
In his new life Joshep Coenell must be small, Strange
little changes keep appearing in his boxes.
I never understood why on a still hill –
side, one leaf was whirling mutely in circles.
Contributor
Sally FisherSally Fisher is the author of The Square (Abrams, 1995) and two children's books published by Viking. Her poetry has appeared in Chelsea, Field, New Directions, Poetry East, Shenandoah, and other magazines and anthologies.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

Ann Lauterbachs Door
By Charles SchultzAPRIL 2023 | Books
To those who ask what her poems are about, Lauterbach answers, the poems find their subjects as they are made.

Every Wall is a Door
By Steven PestanaJUL-AUG 2021 | ArtSeen
Relying on devices familiar to cinema and theater such as darkened rooms, outsized projection, and spectacle, teamLab aims to make visitors participation integral to the fruition of their artworks in the service of democratizing art.
35. February 11, 1963, 23 Fitzroy Road and 3 Abbey Road, London
By Raphael RubinsteinDEC 22–JAN 23 | The Miraculous
Its the nations coldest winter in more than 200 years. Much of the country is covered in snow from December until March. Everything freezes, from water pipes to monumental fountains to streams and rivers. Travel is disrupted, food stocks begin to run low, a regional newspaper reports with dismay that two swans have been found frozen to death on a nearby river.
Shirin Neshats Land of Dreams
By Laura ValenzaJULY/AUG 2023 | Film
In Shirin Neshats 2021 satirical film Land of Dreams, Simins job as a dreamcatcher for the US Census Bureau is to go door-to-door asking that unusual final question: What was your last dream? And thus begins this satirical tale twisting the concept of the American Dream every which way possible until it has been wrung dry.