“The gaze unlatched by time”: On the Poetry of Deirdre O’Connor
It has been such a delight to be re-reading Deirdre’s sublime poetry, as the poet Mary Szybist describes her poems. The Ukrainian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky calls them “spells” filled with the music of “mystery.” And verily, they are. She has that capacity to transform some familiar object into the unfamiliar and magical, to take us readers somewhere we couldn’t have gotten to without the poem. Consider “A wafting pin oak leaf,” a poem in Deirdre’s award-winning collection, The Cupped Field, which describes a brittle leaf falling off a tree toward winter: it resembles “a praying mantis,” “leggy / until it lands,” but with “none of the urgency of the mantis / no menace.” Also, no face. In fact, no limbs. And then this statement in the closing stanzas— “it seems absurd to compare”:
to the newly dead. The act of lifting an arm,
flicking hair away from a face –
foiled, blocked—even thinking,
wingless, breathless,
the kite it was.
The central image, the falling leaf, is a classic symbol of the autumn of life, and the stepped couplets mime the sense of a leaf falling and lifted, wafting on air to the ground. Given the leaf’s description as resembling a menacing mantis, however, our attention strays from the notion of death until deftly, swiftly, we’re there! presented with the sensations of someone who has just died. These descriptions seem so accurate as to make them utterly real to us. The sputtering fricatives of the f’s in the penultimate stanza, and the breathiness, then breathlessness of the final stanza. Although the genre of lyric poetry is generally recognized as indefinable, you’ll know what I mean when I say that this issue’s guest editor has a true lyric gift.
Deirdre O’Connor’s poetry has appeared in Poetry magazine, Crazyhorse, and McSweeney’s, among others. Her first collection, Before the Blue Hour, won the Cleveland State Poetry Center Prize for poetry. Her second collection, The Cupped Field, won the Able Muse Book Award. She has received residency awards from the Vermont Studio Center and the Heinrich Boll Cottage in Ireland. She served for many years as Associate Director of the June Seminar for Undergraduate Poets at Bucknell University, where she also directs the Writing Center. It’s with great excitement that I invite you to enjoy the International Poetry Feature, which Deirdre has curated for Persimmon Tree’s Summer issue.
Finding Solace: The International Poetry Issue
I’ve been reading submissions for the summer international issue—many more fine ones than could be included here—while also trying to keep up with what’s happening in the U.S. and the world. Detentions, deportations, firings, threats; war and more war; outrage, complicity, fear, death. These lines by Adrienne Rich have been resonating with me:
don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear
(“What Kind of Times are These”)
I do what small things I can to promote change, try not to doomscroll, and find solace in my friends and family. I also find solace with writers I will likely meet only on the page, including those assembled in this issue. It’s been my privilege and pleasure to read work by women living outside the U.S. at this moment, not least because these poets and translators remind me—remind us, I believe—to look inside and beyond ourselves, our borders, and our time.
The poems in this issue situate us in very different places and create spaces inflected by desire, empathy, memory, knowledge, pain, and care. These are spaces that invite us to notice and listen; to enter the consciousness of speakers whose language has been shaped by whole lives of paying attention. In most cases, the speakers of these poems are under pressure of some kind, or witness to pressure, as in Margo Berdeshevsky’s “Chorus of One,” where individual friends of the speaker are thinning, dying of cancer in the midst of the many summers unfolding around her:
cracks no gold can fill or mend — but revolutions —
Summer still — of children sickened by that ill that
will not fade — of body after black body choked while
senators and jailers lunch — summer of a rising — standing.
It’s not surprising to feel the past rhyming in the present, but how powerfully it does so in Dvzinia Orlowsky and Ali Kinsella’s translation of Natalka Bilotserkevits’ “Hotel Central,” where
fly along the sweet path
their backpacks — light and bright
their legs — long, their hips—slim
oh, my god, we were like that too
just ten, twenty, thirty years ago
but let go of your homeless regret —
every city has a Hotel Central
for those like you who are no one to nobody.
Sometimes, though, a nobody is treated as a somebody, as in Rasma Haidri’s beautiful “Grace,” where the speaker is startled speechless by a nurse offering, over the phone, not only medical help but access to financial assistance to pay for treatment: genuine care.
In their layers and reaches through time, their attention to care as well as suffering, to desire as well as loss, all the poems in this issue move me. They remind me that while the past and present are vast, so is the future. So is language, and possibility and hope in the world as it is perceived in these poems.
Harvest moon reddened with smoke from Oregon forest fires, photograph by Merry Song, 2022.
Chorus of One
to Paris : take me for rides she pled, and I did.
Stopped all food and all water after, so the brain could close
all its curtains, all its mouths and breaths. And it did.
Summer too of the friend of illuminations who used to high-jump
from standing, long color brushes in hand in front of her murals
to lift her imagination higher, and higher — whispered
on her August birthday : this cancer is very intelligent, it teaches us
to love one another more. And her head, weighted with garlands
and a little more wisdom than the rest of us dared — bent down.
Summer too of : the shining wife of a soldier, she grew half her size —
thinning, and thinning — she was what every fighter wished,
the wife to clean it all for him. She would not fatten again, she
mouthed, loud enough only for the candlenut tree in their jungle
garden to hear her hands. A candlenut can be opened for its oil
that burns brighter than any lamp — to cleanse — it’s known how
ancients gathered its small gifts, fallen from the arms of its massive groves —
broken open, they lit the darkest island nights while voices chanted myths:
mouths, on a single stalk.
And, where the wild orchid rises and withers her tiny many mouths
along a single stalk — a chorus of voices howled for any god at
all — refugee breaths in a wide deserted van, one border away
— no whispers left — but wars.
~
But this — is the summer of a country riven —
cracks no gold can fill or mend — but revolutions —
Summer still — of children sickened by that ill that
will not fade — of body after black body choked while
senators and jailers lunch — summer of a rising — standing.
My friend who belongs to as many past and future lives
as all the wild orchids have mouths — calls to me
(—soul-friend, grandmother, priest— )
I am despondent, she whispers.
My culture died, and no one came to the funeral.
Chorus of one, so softly — only
the night moths hear —
Hotel Central
capricious fate welcomes us
where jazz hums in restaurants at night
and in the morning, bells echo from Gothic arches
there, lilies bloom upon the canals
there, coffee is sipped, then beer
flocks of radiant schoolgirls’ bicycles
fly along the sweet path
their backpacks—light and bright
their legs—long, their hips—slim
oh, my god, we were like that too
just ten, twenty, thirty years ago
but let go of your homeless regret—
every city has a Hotel Central
for those like you who are no one to nobody
here you unpack your modest wealth
remove your contact lenses
wash your flesh, pour your drink
press the button for the pay-for-view
everything you want; and how you want it too
close your eyes, enter, take—
the night music knows no bounds
in the rooms of your Hotel Central
at three in the morning, from heavenly halls
God, like Bosch, enters the Hotel Central
with insects playing clarinets
with mosquitos drinking docile blood
with frogs and slugs—again
with fish; and all your love—
like caviar in infernal offices
like a struggle smeared across the walls
of a weak and miserable slave
a human—and the punishing Spirit
he molds and bends your body
throws you in a vat full of filth
plucks you out with two fingers
shakes you off, looks, and listens
like a first look of tender pity
like a first touch, a sad “I love you”
like a flash of sun on cotton folds—
Hotel Central greets the new morning
and every day—like a final chance
and every night—as if the last
and over the lily-strewn canals
fly the bicycles of tremulous schoolgirls
The full moon, May 2022, post total eclipse, illuminated my lunar heart, photograph by Merry Song
The Scissors
I didn’t choose. I wore the junta uniform, a blue dress with a white collar, the hem below the knees.
Even the private schools?
At all Greek schools the state required the same relinquishment of resistance. The girls wore white socks, white headbands, and their drab dresses, each the same enforced modesty, even when they went to the cinema.
Why?
Not to look different. Dissident.
Before Funny Girl or Love Story the newsreels showed the colonels holding up scissors. Cutting the always white ribbons. New hospitals. New roads. New factories. The police in Nazi khaki and olive drab. The black-robed priests sprinkling holy water with sprigs of basil.
Behind the locked school doors…
They locked the school doors?
An arrow hit the mirror.
And your friends? Were you suspicious?
Of their families, not of each other.
What did you see in the faces of your friends?
We entered the sea. They couldn’t take away the sea. The caves and murmuring waves among the rocks. We practiced butterfly stroke.
Freedom
The woman on the beach is carrying her house on her back, you can see it in her spine as it shows through her wet swimsuit, her tense muscles reveal she’s been dragging it over long distances. The look in her eyes tells us how recently she decided to leave and take the whole house with her. Finally she managed to heave it up, but since then hasn’t known where to put it down. The twitches in her upper arms give you a sense of her predicament. Nonetheless the way she lifts her head gives the impression she owns the whole beach, the rock on which she’s resting, the calm wash of the waves, even the sunlight sparkling on the glass beads she wears around her neck. And she owns the horizon, just like everyone, or no one, does, and a hard-won insight into something difficult and wonderful. That’s what’s making her shine with light.
Happy Springtime Moon to All, photograph by Merry Song
Sheltering Beneath
I slip through the door, a wraith into darkness. My animal senses switch to alert, feet planted firmly for ballast, body pressed against the back wall, fearing a parapet. My nose twitches, sniffs the faint brine. Silence has its talons retracted. My eyes strain against the solidity of shadows. Pale light-strobes briefly illuminate cavernous space. Some silhouetted shapes huddle against walls. Massive legs of an old pier come into focus. I shuffle towards the bulk of the nearest, the only possible harbour. Seeping into me – the industrial smell, the dead cold of concrete. Thunderous walls of water crash nearby, the sounds of a thrashing sea. Then storm cacophony, electric flashing lightning, the fusillade acoustic of torrents. We’re sheltering beneath, while above is battered, pounding the hard c of calamity, catastrophe, cataclysm into us.
Interleavings
where each leaf susurrates with a story
of season-quartered spells
till an axe cracks out
the ringed history
of each tree’s
past.
Past
the trees
lies the pulped history
of axial words, hard printed,
seasoned into unintelligible spells.
Folios of new leaves rustle up scoffable
stories that mimic and magnify libraries of need.
How deep those craters must be. How deep and wide infinity stretches my mind. Photograph by Merry Song.
Two Poems From De Senectute Erotica
During
leading to a primitive mandala
in which our secret innermost desires
emerge in unison.
Displaying gleaming satin underwear
I march upon our secret half-lit stage
beneath your greenish cat-like voyeur eyes
that find my flesh again.
A cauldron where, before time breaks apart
the sacred and profane, a sticky mass
of juice-filled apples ripens and grows sweet,
softly, very softly.
Melted into one, the goddess Siva,
I lace around your waist encircling thighs
and in my pleasure rise between our spasms
lifted by your arms.
Corners, tables, floor, the door, the pillows
transmute themselves into a cozy bed,
the bed itself has now become an alcove
in which our wishes,
moans whimpered forth from deep inside our guts,
clamor from our mouths, bold and impudent,
the same old fantasies we’ve long confessed,
a scoreless counterpoint
Your mouth returns sweet nectar into mine,
sucked from a keen and avid inner pulp
and then I sip your body, sun and salt,
flambéed in my own spice.
Accomplices in making eternal
a pleasure that satiety burns out
we now suspend the pendulum of time
and the air between us.
After
When we are stretched upon the pale blue bed,
a canopy of peace is lulling us, blessing
our two bodies slack
and in communion, now, made moist by grace,
we trade confessions, unconfessed before,
daydreaming, both of us, our dreams aloud,
and our defeats.
I then begin with care upon your feet
the lightly loving dialogue of hands:
discovering in the fringes of your flesh
lost voices,
broken harmonies that I collect
recomposing songs that once we heard,
that once we danced and that come back to us
now shared.
Your thoughts reveal themselves to me in Braille
upon my blind and visionary palms
in a complete deciphering of your flesh
an open book.
The Secrets in Their Bones
In the shapes of the voids between the words,
heartache monochromes their odes.
Tears pool over love.
The altar stands abandoned.
Though April showers do bring May flowers,
some trees blossom in drought –
seeds rain on bare altar.
In the photo, the grandmothers stand side by side.
All the heart-wrenching secrets they carried,
all the sugar-coated lies,
lie buried with their bones.
Don’t get in her way. She’s headed toward her eclipse. Total, complete, and unimaginable. Photograph by Merry Song.
Release
off from the wingtip of a far-off star
and fell to earth. As translucent as notes
of music. The pearl at my breast spoke
soft words in an unknown language. Your breath
expelled a net of desires, which wafted down
to the un-swept floor, gathering
the dust of days and nights that ran
off the digits of my fingers, and lay
in dark corners and beneath the stairs
unleashing the foul odours of their discontent.
You emerged at last from your trussing,
your medicated sleep. You said you no longer
knew me. That you could not have, and
you took leave to explore life
as you would have known it – all
the places and people you had met in your sleep.
You left, kicking aside the decaying mounds
of our time together. You took nothing with you.
Instead, you marched out to meet
the August sun, which held my eye
in a hard stare, and claimed my pearl.
I now know the mystery of tree birth.
How fruits rot and seemingly die.
The seeds so hard and bitter, and yet
the earth holds them in such a tender
embrace. And the sun lifts them.
Letting them stride the steepled air,
fragrant with saplings, fresh with hope,
and a thirst for life.
Like how you have released me
with your insouciance. The casing
that I have broken through. And how
I am learning now like a newborn thing,
what it means to be finally alive.
Pietà
Bolt of bruise in blue, hard
beige lump, a head covered, knuckles
between skulls, fingers swung
in a tendril-to-soil whisper over the crescendo
of white music pouring
through Inas’s arms and onto
her lap, its leg notes dangling:
her niece.
Saly,
cocooned now, your body swallowed
the war—lime to acid
drop of salt and water—
you soaked up incessant centuries,
at least as long as before Babylon,
into the soft and sorry brightness of your far,
far too few days.
Tall Oregon trees hold Moon heart on her journey. Mystery vast as infinity. Photograph by Merry Song
Grace
Come in
so she hears only silence
if you need help
from my side of the phone
the ER is always open
and may think me rude
we will notify
an ill-mannered bum
the Salvation Army
when I mumble OK
when they open on Monday
on the inside I’m keening
they’ll pay for your bill
for the beauty of people
you really should
like her in this world
have your arm checked out
whose voice is warm and bright
if you think it is broken
as the cornflower scarf
so just come anytime
of my homemade sling.
you have a need.
Through the Window Early
silent
as the mist
breathing
from the newborn
ribbon
of dark river
bound
still by ice
bruised fingers of cloud
descend
to stroke the trees
cat mews around
old ankles
purrs and curls
on the computer
a package
of black and marmalade
fur enwreathed
by her tail
delicate wafts of skunk
dissipate
a reminder that we
share the world
in my little space
in comfort
I inhale
coffee
I am not hungry
I am not cold
I do not sleep
on concrete
behind locked doors
A reckless shot of the total eclipse, photograph by Merry Song
Two Poems
Nocturne with Ruins
there’s no tomorrow they are saying
something about the rutted path
to the village over the hill how it skirts
a little lake and ruins spill like teeth
into a field where horses raise their heads
to watch them trudge up what they call the scalp
in their language and how when they get to the top
they pause to pray for you not yet born listen
they’re saying hurry there is something
on the other side they can’t tell what
but it’s reaching toward wherever they are
even there they’re hearing of it
and hope you’re listening to this
April Ode to Julia
battered by cold rain but still standing
among the others like guards of a garden to be. A garden that will begin
once I get down on my knees with the steel hand rake
and plant some seeds. A garden that will become as a girl becomes
herself—slowly then suddenly full. A garden
imperfectly tended, fending for itself
as a girl without a mother must—
must grow, must bend, must not completely
bend or break. Must root
where her mother cannot stand, must be nourished
and turn as the days demand facing the sun.
“'How to save a bird-ling or a world? How to save a springtime?' Terrifying questions like this loom before us all, at this haunted moment ⎯ yet when the night demands we kneel, Margo Berdeshevsky dreams up rare new postures. She starts from ruin, her planet ravaged and her body long past nubile, but spawns miraculous fables, the offspring of Mother Goose and W.S. Merwin. One has the radium-glow of south Pacific bombing lanes, another exhales the toxic dust of Vesuvius, but all nay-say the glowering darkness. A remarkable accomplishment, this hybrid raises a 'tumult of hands that reach through smoke keening ⎯ call it — salvage — scream — prayer.'" ⎯John Domini, author of the Naples Earthquake I.D. trilogy
"Composed of lyric essays, line broken poems, revamped fairy tales, erotic myths, and histories clothed in see-through shifts, wearing Eau Sauvage men’s cologne, Kneel Said the Night: a hybrid book in half notes, is a lush, authoritative masterwork. This Red Riding Hood gathers flowers and details in her basket, and generates revivified archetypes—'menstrual-colored canary,' 'full paunch moon'—that can only emerge from an imagination fed by solitude and desire (and Paris). 'I’m the woman who asks how close is death, how near is God,' Berdeshevsky writes, and in this intimate, audacious collection, the answer is very close, and very, very near."–-Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets, Pulitzer Prize recipient
Available from Amazon, Bookshop.org, or Sundress Publications
Aliki Barnstone and Liana Sakelliou are poets, translators, memoirists, critics, university professors, and editors. Close in age and united by a shared literary sensibility, they both draw deeply from personal, familial, and historical memory to explore the Greek military junta (1967–1974)—a shadowed era in modern history that remains strikingly underrepresented in literature.
Margo Berdeshevsky writes in Paris. Her books include 
Natalka Bilotserkivets’s lyrical work, evoking the quiet power of despair, shaped Ukraine’s 1980s literary life. Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow, co-translated into English by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky, was a 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize finalist and won the 2020–2021 AAUS Translation Prize. She resides in Kyiv.
Hanne Bramness is a Norwegian poet, editor, and translator, recipient of the Dobloug Prize (2006). Her last two collections are Snø på museum (2021) and Himmelen faller ikke ned (April 2025), a poetic elegy on mother-daughter relationships. Translations of her work include a collection in French (2019) and (forthcoming, 2025) new selected poems, The History of Winter.
Anne M Carson is an Australian poet and essayist whose poetry has been published internationally, and widely in Australia over many years, receiving numerous awards including being shortlisted in the Women Authors New South Wales Poetry Prize (2024) and commended in the Ada Cambridge Poetry award (2024). Her fourth poetry collection is The Detective’s Chair: prose poems about fictional detectives (Liquid Amber Press, 2023). Her PhD (RMIT, 2023) received an Outstanding Dissertation Prize (AERA, 2024).
Rasma Haidri is the award-winning author of two poetry collections, Blue Like Apples and As If Anything Can Happen. Her writing has appeared in Rattle, Fourth Genre, Prairie Schooner, River Teeth, Phoebe and elsewhere. She lives with her wife on a Norwegian seacoast island. Visit her at 
Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming is a Trinidadian Bahamian mechanical/building services engineer, poet, fiction writer, and artist. Internationally anthologized, she is the author of two poetry collections: Curry Flavour (Peepal Tree Press, 2000) and Immortelle and Bhandaaraa Poems (an art/poetry hybrid work published by Proverse Hong Kong, 2011).
Pam Martin is a retired therapist living in small town Ontario. Her book Variations on Blue (Acorn Press 2013) was shortlisted for the PEI Book Award (Poetry). She recently completed a novel. At 81, she is making the most of old age, enjoying photography, writing, and walking in the woods.
Robin Peace, born 1951, lives and works in Ōtaki, a small town north of Wellington, NZ. Since 2017 she has focused on writing poetry informed by her professional life as a geographer/social scientist, traveler, naturalist, and reader. Detritus of Empire (Cuba Press), her second collection, was published in 2024.
Leonor Scliar-Cabral is Professor Emerita at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil. She continues to work as a psycholinguist in the field of literacy training. Her poetry has appeared in Brazil in the following volumes: Sonnets, Memories of the Sephardim, Of Erotic Senectitude, The Sun Fell on the Guaíba, Consecration of the Alphabet, and José. All of the poems included in her collection Consecration of the Alphabet, published bilingually by Ben Yehuda Press in January, 2025, have appeared in the following literary magazines: Amethyst Review, Blue Unicorn, Epoch, Home Planet News, Measure, niv, Oberon Poetry Magazine, Per Contra, Plume, and Poetica Magazine. Poems drawn from her recent Book of Joseph have been accepted by Amethyst Review, Blue Horizon, Metamorphoses, and International Poetry Review.
Shikhandin is the pen name of an Indian writer. Her books include The Woman on the Red Oxide Floor (Red River Story, India), After Grief – Poems (Red River, India), Impetuous Women (Penguin-RHI), Immoderate Men (Speaking Tiger, India), and Vibhuti Cat (Duckbill-Penguin-RHI), among others. She is widely anthologized and published worldwide.
Barbara Geary Truan was born and raised in the U.S. and earned a graduate degree in international relations before moving to Switzerland where she settled, worked, and raised a family. She recently received her MFA from Seattle Pacific University and is a member of the Geneva Writers’ Group.
Ali Kinsella's translation of Anna's Other Days will be out this summer from Harvard. With Dzvinia Orlowsky, she co-translated Natalka Bilotserkivets’s Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow, a 2022 Griffin finalist. They received a 2024 NEA Fellowship and were longlisted for the 2025 PEN Translation Award for Lost in Living by Halyna Kruk.
Alexis Levitin has published fifty books of translations, including Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm and Eugenio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words, both from New Directions. His most recent translations of poetry include: from Brazil, five volumes of poetry by Salgado Maranhão and two collections of poetry by Astrid Cabral; from Portugal, Rosa Alice Branco’s Cattle of the Lord and Eugenio de Andrade’s Furrows of Thirst; and from Ecuador, Carmen Vascones’ Outrage. He is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts translation awards and has held Fulbright positions in Portugal, Brazil, and Ecuador. He is Leonor Scliar-Cabral’s official translator into English.
Dzvinia Orlowsky’s seventh poetry collection is Those Absences Now Closest (2024). With Ali Kinsella, she co-translated Natalka Bilotserkivets’s Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow, a 2022 Griffin finalist. They received a 2024 NEA Fellowship and were longlisted for the 2025 PEN Translation Award for Lost in Living by Halyna Kruk.
Anna Reckin is a poet and translator based in the UK. Her first two collections, Three Reds and Line to Curve, were published by Shearsman. Her translation of Hanne Bramness’ “Water Glass” sequence appeared in Long Poem Magazine in 2021 and Winter Kitchen/Vinter-kjøkken, a book of poems for young people, in 2020.
Ever since Merry Song’s photography first appeared in issue #65, she has headed out with camera in hand and Persimmon Tree in her heart. Her images have appeared in every issue since Winter 2023. Because of Persimmon Tree, her art life has taken on new energy. She has deep appreciation for all those involved in the production end of the publication as well as the readership. Merry Song is a passionate amateur photographer with five decades of capturing faces, protest events, and dynamic nature, including solar eclipses, full moons, and wild ocean. She resides in Oregon where she leads writing workshops.
Cynthia Hogue is the Poetry Editor of Persimmon Tree. Her tenth book of collected poetry, instead, it is dark, was published by Red Hen Press in June of 2023. Her other collections include Revenance, listed as one of the 2014 “Standout” books by the Academy of American Poets, and In June the Labyrinth (2017). Her third book-length translation (with Sylvain Gallais) is Nicole Brossard’s Distantly (Omnidawn, 2022). Her Covid chapbook is entitled Contain (Tram Editions, 2022). Among her honors are a Fulbright Fellowship to Iceland, two NEA Fellowships, and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets (2013). She served as Guest Editor for Poem-a-Day for September (2022), sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. Hogue was the inaugural Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University. She lives in Tucson.
Deirdre O’Connor is the author of two books of poetry, most recently The Cupped Field, which received the Able Muse Book Award. Her work has appeared recently in Diode, SWWIM, Bennington Review, Journal of the American Medical Association, and Great River Review. She directs the Writing Center at Bucknell University.