Vaporub

October 2024 | poetry

1900’s high tech vocabulary comes to mind.

Following the stapler, stethoscopes, steam locomotives, safety pins,

and tungsten steel much spoken of in our metallurgist’s family

where Dad won a Bessemer medal and we all hazarded a worry

while stepping into the Barney’s department store elevator

about metal fatigue, came this rearrangement

of antique comforts and distresses. Camphor,

eucalyptus, levomenthol, thyme, and cedar oil:

call them to mind and hearing this

you can feel already the aromatic stirrings swirl

up your sinuses. I think of embalming — myrrh

in the exotic garden setting the space ajar between death

and preservation. I thought it was named after my Dad — Vick’s —

and remember dimly him circling it on my chest

at night through the crush and press and gasp

of pertussis, how he sat by my bed through the night

when I was four, and camphor swirled like saints’ ghosts

up from the sheets. Bitter bewitching notes of turpentine

made me dream of his soaked rag in a tin in the cellar

for wiping oil paint splotches off our hands;

and paraffin — that lit my Nana’s glass lamps before the cords

came spidering across the ceilings. These ancient consolations

cleansing, opening, embrocatory magic

worked their mending sorceries toward sleep.

I have only to unscrew the small blue jar

from the shrine of my medicine cabinet’s back shelf

and trustworthy hands are anointing me again like hierophants

by night, whispering: rest and mend, and then,

you, too, go out and heal and make things strong and well.

Jennifer M Phillips

A much-published bi-national immigrant, gardener, Bonsai-grower, and painter, Jennifer M Phillips has lived in five states, two countries, and now, with gratitude, in Wampanoag ancestral land on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (i-blurb.com, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022), and Sailing To the Edges (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2025). Two of Phillips’ poems were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her collection is Wrestling with the Angel (forthcoming, Wipf & Stock).

The Brasserie

October 2024 | poetry

Today’s sky is a weak imitation of blue.

She slips in the back door, a line cook

at the brasserie in Saint-Germain-des-Prés,

well-known for duck, well-known

for drifters and dreamers, lovers long gone

and those newly found. The man at the bar

will lie his way into any woman’s good graces

but that’s not her problem today, even though

they talk about him in back in many languages.

Duck perfectly rendered, apricots

tender and jam-like as they let go

of summer to tantalize with their scent

before the lunch rush,

haricots verts amandine butter-basted,

and if she has a few extra minutes, help

the pastry chef with crème brȗlée.

Curtains sweep open to her childhood

cooking with maman before the postcard—

dashed off in pencil—au revoir my child,

be strong, love well, you will always

be in my heart. She grabs a small glass

of almost-going-bad Bordeaux

and a bummed-off-a-bad-boy cigarette,

takes a quick break outside,

torn between the touching young words

of that postcard, and the yelling going on

in the kitchen.

She wears drab clothes one could call

military castoffs, and clogs, the footwear

of all kitchen personnel. She walks

the streets of the city before her shift,

goes to the markets, feeds heels of bread

to the fish in many different parks,

watches a gulls wings widen

in the coming-up sun, and greets

the old men playing morning chess,

espresso carts waiting to serve them when

they break—she plants a maternal kiss

on each man’s forehead, she’s known them for years.

They will always be in her heart, even the ones

whose weary eyes are shut against the world.

By Tobi Alfier

Tobi Alfier’s credits include Arkansas Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Cholla Needles, Gargoyle, James Dickey Review, KGB Bar Lit Mag, Louisiana Literature, Permafrost, Washington Square Review, and War, Literature and the Arts. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).