Three Poems
by Steph Sundermann-Zinger
FREEDOM AS SPECTRAL GOLDFISH
True freedom would be life without a body, vague as sky
in a pond’s reflection. In my childhood backyard, goldfish rot
toward spectral emptiness in their spoon-dug divots. A body
will turn spiteful, given time. My father bought the fish for me
and didn’t blame me when they died, even though I’d let the tank
go mossy with neglect. They might have lived full lives, he told me.
After all, you can’t really know a fish’s age. He was younger
that day than I am now, his hair already thinning to bare scalp. Once,
a rangy heron tried to swallow the pumpkin-colored carp
from my sister’s koi pond - she shouted until its beak clacked open
and the fish slid back into the water, indignant flicker. I saw
the scars, long and pale as chopsticks along its scaly sides. He’s
so lucky, I said, and meant it. My father is half water now,
half sky. When I turn, the mirror looks away.
HOSPICE
I once drove a rental car off the road
because it smelled like gardenias. Funny,
the way plant names can sound like diseases -
lungwort, itchweed, deadnettle. You’re
in hospice, which sounds nicer than hospital,
but isn’t. At twilight, my children’s shadows
look like flowers, shaggy blossoms
on long, distorted stalks. Some plants
only bloom at night – moonflower, mock orange,
evening primrose. Even gardenia favors
the close of day, spectral sweetness
bewitching the moths. Shadow can mean
darkness, or a ghost. You might grow
poisonous things, unknowing – sumac, hemlock,
hogweed – the lightest touch leaves a shock
of blisters, weeping. A bouquet can whisper
sorrow’s withered story – clinging vine, bleeding
hearts, forget-me-not. When you go, expected
will make a daisy chain of grief.
AFTER POETRY
Surely, the ants will stagger on,
jaws clamped on purloined pinpricks
of sugar, stitching a ragged seam
along the kitchen baseboards. The fox
will haunt the back hill in velvet slippers,
supple sketch of a mouth
holding the ghosts of a thousand
small deaths, while the barn owl
coughs bones and teeth, and the robins
weave rough cradles in the eaves. The beetles
will bluster and bang, the moths
swarm the porch light, the spiders twist
their silver thread into dewy hammocks,
blistered with flies. Everything will die,
and be born, and die again,
nothing changing but the tender quiet
in the times between, and the sky, that rebel,
still scrawling shadows and light.
​​​​​​BIO
Steph Sundermann-Zinger (they/she) is a queer poet living and writing in the Baltimore area. Her work explores themes of identity, relationship, and connection with the natural world, and has appeared in Blue Unicorn, Little Patuxent Review, Lines + Stars, Literary Mama, The Avenue, and other journals. Their poem, "In Praise of Solitude," was selected as the winner of the 2023 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize, and they are a 2024 Writer in Residence for Yellow Arrow Publishing. She holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore.