https://www.albany.edu/offcourse
http://offcourse.org
ISSN 1556-4975
Published by Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg since 1998
"The Week of January 20, 2025
-Riverside, California," a poem by Judy Kronenfeld
The cassia bush bursts
into canary yellow.
The palo verde extends
its wispy arms adorned with one
or two new blooms.
Birdsong explodes on the mild air.
Gossamer white scarves
of cloud spread and eddy
in the cerulean blue.
Every night at 3 A.M. I wake.
Fear slithers inside me,
hissing. I turn to sleepless stone,
my heart crushed and dark.
In the morning the cassia’s
pointillist display,
the palo verde’s lace,
raucous chirp and chatter of birds,
ironic infinity of sky.
Judy Kronenfeld’s six full-length books of poetry include If Only There Were Stations of the Air (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2024), Groaning and Singing (FutureCycle, 2022), Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017), and Shimmer (WordTech, 2012). Her third chapbook is Oh Memory, You Unlocked Cabinet of Amazements! (Bamboo Dart, 2024). Judy’s poems have appeared in four dozen anthologies and in such journals as Cider Press Review, Gyroscope Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Ohio Review, Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Verdad. Her newest book—published by the Inlandia Institute on Feb. 1, 2025—is Apartness: A Memoir in Essays and Poems. Judy is Lecturer Emerita, Creative Writing Department, UC Riverside.