Walking
My first walk is also my first memory—
On the purple carpet, in the living room
Of that bungalow in the suburbs built
For the soldiers who returned from the war.
One parent directed me towards the other,
Who waited with open arms,
Both of them smiling, encouraging,
My brothers on the stairway cheering. No,
I don’t recall if there was music playing
Or if an uncle was filming that historic
Occasion, I couldn’t tell you anything
About the Cold War outside or how
The country was about to collide
With itself—you wouldn’t ask me then
About what would become of us:
One parent’s exploding heart,
The other parent’s vanishing mind—
I don’t even remember if I made it
To the other side without falling:
The only thing I can say with certainty
Is that, between one parent and the other,
I somehow stood up and stumbled into my life.
Pittsburgh Quarterly is now accepting submissions for its weekly online poetry feature. PQ Poem is seeking poetry from local, national and international poets that highlight a strong voice and good use of imagery, among other criteria. To have your work featured, send up to three previously unpublished poems in Word or PDF format as well as a brief bio to pittsburghquarterlymag@gmail.com
Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but if work is accepted elsewhere, please alert us.
Philip Terman’s recent books This Blossoming Everything (Saddle Road Press, 2024) and The Whole Mishpocha: New and Selected Jewish Poems (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024), and, as co-translator, Tango Beneath a Narrow Ceiling: The Selected poems of Riad Saleh Hussein (Bitter Oleander, 2021). His poems and essays appear in many journals and anthologies, such as Poetry Magazine, The Kenyon Review, Poetry International, The Sun, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Poetry, and Extraordinary Rendition: American Writers on Palestine. He co-directed the James Wright Poetry Festival in 2023, directs The Bridge Literary Arts Center, a regional writer’s organization in western, PA, and is co- curator the Jewish Poetry Reading Series, sponsored by the Jewish Community Center of Buffalo. Terman conducts poetry workshops and coaches writing hither and yon. https://philipterman.my.canva.site
