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
Our Ark
Our Ark If it’s the spruce it must be the mourning doves, the willow— the two blue birds the arborvitaes—robins If it’s the shagbark hickory the red-headed woodpecker If it’s the red oak at the far end of the trail the magnificent male pheasant If it’s the underbrush at the inflow-end of the pond the …
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, …