Poetry Magazine, Anita Byerly, March 2001

Poetry Magazine

Anita Gavaudan Byerly

USA

Anita Gevaudan Byerly is a resident of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As a single parent, she raised a son and daughter while working as a secretary. At age 50 she went back to school and after taking evening classes for years, graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in English Writing. Anita was Poet-in-Residence at St. Edmund’s Academy, an elementary school in Pittsburgh, for eight years. She is a Fellow of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, has taught at the project’s Young Writer’s Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and served on the editorial staff of Riverspeak, their annual publication. Anita is also a member of the Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop, the Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania Poetry Societies, and Tea Time Ladies, a performance poetry ensemble which performed in Pittsburgh and the surrounding area from 1992 through 1998. Her work has appeared many times in The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and she has also been published in The Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Ledge, The Exchange, and the Loyalhanna Review. Recently her poems appeared in the Sandburg-Livesay Anthology and yawp. Online, Anita has had poems in poetrypoetry.net and poetrymagazine.com. Anita won the In Pittsburgh Newsweekly Poetry Competition in 1987, was a finalist in the 1994 Negative Capability “Eve of St. Agnes” PoetryCompetition, and was a semi-finalist in the 2000 Comstock Review Poetry Contest. She was awarded prizes in the poetry competition at the Westmoreland Arts and Heritage Festival in both 1998 and 1999. Now retired, she spends her time writing and enjoying family, friends, and life in general.

BRADDOCK AVENUE

They'll never come back: two furniture stores,

three banks, three movie houses -- Capitol, Times,

and Paramount, where at 13 I let a strange boy

put his hand on my knee, then confessed it

to old Father Joe at St. Mary's on Sixth Street;

and where at 21, a ring was slipped on my finger

while we watched "On the Town" in the dark.

I loved to shop the day before Christmas

at Shub's for fresh roasted peanuts,

the smell catching you before you even got in the door.

I loved to stop at Och's Delicatessen

for corned beef; Nill's for poppy seed bread.

I loved bright lights strung across the street,

green wreaths, decorated trees in the windows --

before Braddock Avenue died, like the mill,

Carnegie's first. Gone are DeRoy's Jewelers,

Jaison's, the Famous Department Store,

to the malls leaving boarded doors, blind windows.

Oh, to be there again before black Friday in Dallas

before that long funeral march down Pennsylvania Avenue

with the black riderless horse and the muffled drum cadence

reverberating on every Main Street, in every home.

Oh, to be back on Braddock Avenue

when our world was a Saturday matinee,

a dance at the Polish Falcons, where a tall woman

in a polka-dot blouse danced the schottische

with a short man in matching shirt, toupee awry.

First published in the Sandburg-Livesay Anthology, 2000

FOR A DAUGHTER IN VIRGINIA

A part of me lives in Virginia

where the steep slopes of Pennsylvania

are replaced by the Tidewater flats,

and the muddy Monongahela and Allegheny

seem dwarfed in comparison

to a thousand blue lakes, inlets

and the mighty Chesapeake,

where summers are blast-furnace hot

and winter barely makes an appearance,

where the pine grows to cathedral heights

and soil has the grit and glitter

of sand instead of graphite.

There in a townhouse in a row of four,

a part of me lives with the man she loves,

making love, doing chores,

teaching third graders at the local school,

there where lavender azaleas thrive

and pink crepe myrtle flourish,

among the fabled white magnolia trees.

First published in Round and Catch, Univ. of Pittsburgh, 1985

DEPARTURE

Last night I dreamt, mother,

we were in a crowded bus depot.

You were holding tightly to my hand;

I was leading the way

and then you were gone.

My hand was empty and I

was in a room of many doors ...

steel doors without handles.

Frantically, I pushed against

the hard cold metal of each one,

imagining you somewhere,

bewildered and alone.

Finally a door opened

and I rushed outside in time

to see the bus pull away

with you at a window.

You seemed to be with friends.

You did not look back.

You were smiling.

First published in Riverspeak, Western Penna.Writing Project, 2000

OCTOBER MONTAGE
in memory of Jane Piatek
October 15, 1995

The trees wear gold lame,

dance the shimmy in the sun

while hardy mums shout

their last hurrah.

A hay ride to the farm

and grandchildren scramble

to find the perfect pumpkin

under a pewter sky.

Hot apple cider satisfies

after a brisk walk in the woods

where acorns drop like hail,

leaves crunch underfoot.

Two-year-old Katie

sings “Happy Birthday,”

helps me blow out

candles on my cake,

but later I lose my footing

when your daughter Leah calls

to tell me you died that day.

Tears falling, I remember

how we danced at the Falcons

in our Saturday best;

stopped for burgers at Jim’s

on the way home;

how we shouted

for our playing children

or called to each other

across the way;

how we shared

the books we read and vowed

we’d never get old enough

to play Bingo.

DANDELIONS

Bright blossoms,

basking in the sun,

you offer leaves for salad greens,

tops for dandelion wine,

then change to pale gauze

lightly lifted by the wind.

Poor maligned flower,

cursed for your fecundity,

if you would bloom but once each year

at midnight on the first of August,

crowds would wait for your appearance;

the press would send photographers.

Your zest for life dooms you, but I

can think of no more lovely sight

than suns scattered across an emerald sky,

moons rising unexpectedly.

First published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, May, 1994