The one on the right’s the plotter 
in mid-syllable, hatching some plan, 
telling some secret—perhaps she’ll exact 
a pinky promise. Proprietary as a guy 
with duck’s-ass haircut, and sleeves rolled up 
to show his biceps, who dangles 
his fingers over his gal’s shoulder, 
she takes charge with an arm 
slung around her little friend’s. 
A few mussed wisps of her hair 
cling to the other girl’s bangs. 

Behind them—ugliness. A battered city wall 
with indecipherable scribbles in chalk. 
But they are beautiful, and neat and cared for. 
The blond’s well-cut hair and the brunette’s waves 
caught in a barrette are clean, and shine. 

How wonderful—the listener’s singular 
focus, her face turned wholly to take in, 
to follow, unstinting—she seems hushed 
with the awe of being claimed. 

We played in swarms in elementary school—
I don’t think I ever gave such rapt attention 
to a friend, and surely never received it. 
Though there was one girl, in fifth grade, 
whose freedom utterly compelled me. 
I must have looked at her like this 
when she couldn’t see. 

*Publisher’s Note:

The photograph referenced in the poem above appears as Slide Number 7 in Vivian Maier’s Street 4 portfolio at this website: http://www.vivianmaier.com/

Judy Kronenfeld’s

memoir-in-essays, Apartness, is forthcoming from Inlandia Books in 2024/2025. Her seventh collection, and her fifth full-length book of poetry, Groaning and Singing was released by FutureCycle in 2022. Previous books include Bird Flying Through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017) and Shimmer (WordTech, 2012).

Her poems have appeared in four dozen anthologies and in such journals as Cider Press Review, Cimarron Review, Connotation Press, Ghost Town, Gyroscope Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Ohio Review, Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Verdad. Her stories are published in The Madison Review, The North American Review, Literary Mama, and other magazines, and her creative nonfiction, in Under the Sun; Hippocampus; Inlandia: A Literary Journey; and elsewhere.

Her story The Paisley Scarf was published in The Loch Raven Review (Volume 16, No. 1, 2020) and was nominated for a Pushcart.

Her most recent piece of creative nonfiction, Operating in French, appeared in Kaleidoscope (Number 84, Winter/Spring 2022), pages 14-19.

Judy holds a Stanford PhD in English and has criticism published, including King Lear and the Naked Truth (Duke, 1998). She is Lecturer Emerita, Department of Creative Writing at UC Riverside.

Author’s website: http://www.judykronenfeld.com/