Karen Greenbaum-Maya
Karen Greenbaum-Maya, retired clinical psychologist, German major, Pushcart nominee and occasional photographer, no longer lives for Art, but still thinks about it a lot. Poems appeared recently in Women's Studies Quarterly, Bohemia, The Mom Egg, RiverLit, and qarrtsiluni. “Eggs Satori” was recently selected for Black Lawrence’s forthcoming anthology, FEAST. Centrifugal Eye recently featured her mini-chapbook, Floating Route. She will be a featured poet in a forthcoming issue of Unshod Quills. Kattywompus Press just released Burrowing Song, a collection of prose poems.


carpet, v., n. : as in bombing,
laying down death, hot and bright,
covering with orange turning
to the black that erases, smudges
like punch spilled
onto carpet, the happy host
pouring, not looking, laughing,
missing the cup, a wet sticky rope
of sweet black tea and orange sherbet,
the stain that rises and rises again,
that Poe story retold, never weary,
a blow that keeps pummeling,
a blue-black stain cleaning cannot touch;
carpet woven by hands
100,000 knots of silk
tied tight, meant to last.


Monsieur Saluki

He’s installed in front of the cemetery
and we pass him, on our way to the Métro station,
on our way to the café with the guide dog.
He is arguing with himself in reasoned discourse,
laying out his points, weighing each in his hands,
one against the other. He nods:  well said.
Full hair springing silver frames brown eyes
dark and liquid as a Saluki. Monsieur Saluki.
He surveys us holding hands, settles
his fringed red scarf like Lautrec's Aristide;
he catches my eye and calls to me:  Mais souriez, ma belle!
A beat until my French clicks:  Come on, sweetheart, smile!
and when I hear, I smile to him as sweet as ever I can.
He tips his face up to the leafing white alders,
he sighs, Oh, to be in love in springtime.


© 2013 Karen Greenbaum-Maya
Karen Greenbaum-Maya was a Featured Poet who read her poetry at the August 2013 Second Sunday Poetry Series