ZILIA BALKANSKY-SELLES is a writer and actor based in Bloomington, Indiana. Her poems have been published in the online journal Comparative Woman, and in the books Trigger Warnings, edited by Joan Hawkins and Kalynn Brower, and Stormwash: Environmental Poems, edited by Hiromi Yoshida. Her work appeared in the 2023 Ryder Magazine, Poetry Edition and has been presented at spoken-word events hosted by the Writers Guild at Bloomington.
Welcome to the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Zilia, what have you brought for us?
"Elephant Born”
I hate the adage
“What doesn’t kill you
makes you stronger.”
It can maim you,
or maybe you rise in a new
version which is not the
version who went through the hurt.
Metamorphosis means change
that is radical—radical as
dissolving the cells that shape you
and taking a new shape.
Melting, as tiny crystals can be melted
Into glass—then blown—
then shaped, reshaped, repurposed;
caterpillars to chrysalis to butterflies,
and all that stuff.
Tadpoles to frogs.
Eggs, embryos, hatching
new chicks,
who grow, and shift again, full-feathered
and fat.
What doesn’t kill you
is horrible advice, horrible
non-consolation.
Rates of transformation matter.
Bake whole wheat bread slices too hot,
too quickly, and the would-be toast is charred and crisp.
Chips, other things, edible and not, felt and seen,
get brittle or never harden
if the temperature is wrong.
Metaphors are horrible
when it comes to living beings.
Tell the kangaroo, a flyer, of the labors
of childbirth,
if you could share a language
and symbology—
What would be similar? What would
be so different that, truly,
you would both see you
are alien species sharing a
planet.
Baby horses can stand
minutes (thirty, more or less) after birth.
On savannahs, in broad
open spaces of danger and
possibilities, some babies
have to run to live,
hitting the ground, almost, running.
Welcome to the world.
Baby elephants, if their herd
has not been decimated
by poachers,
arrive in the circle of aunties,
and sisters, and cousins,
the matriarchal ring, the caring collective.
Wouldn’t that be nice
to open your baby
elephant eyes and feel
the warm earth, the tender
touching trunks reaching to your newly
exposed body, your clan receiving you,
and the trunk-like legs of your family,
the guarding aunts,
a protective stockade around you?
---
"Mulch Pile"
Doing nothing leads to disintegration and new life in the woodchip pile. Roughly shredded branches break down soil appears between the broken twigs. Earthworms take residence in each shovelful each handful. Breaking to nourish the clay soil of southern Indiana.
---
"April 20, 2021, 7:56 PM"
A light snow covers the newly budded rose of Sharon stalks under the white crystals. The eastern red buds shine pinkly the miniature Tulip tree leaves palm upwards. Catch the falling flakes. Signs of spring shine in the great twilight. In a city far from here, a verdict is given of guilty three times over what it means or does not mean cannot be fully seen without distance and time. In Columbus, a black girl dies by police bullets, no warning, no reprieve. Within minutes of that verdict. In the Gray twilight of a spring, snow red drops flare through the white crystals.
---
"The Assurance of a Sunflower"
the sunflower seed, bursting with assurance, sprouts skyward without doubts.
You've been listening to the poems of Zilia Balkansky-Selles on the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.
