The forty-seventh Moon Prize goes to Nancy Gerber's poem "In the Garden, Stuttgart."

In the Garden, Stuttgart

by Nancy Gerber

Captive forever in black and white,

my family seated in the garden.

Great Uncle Louis, Great Grandma Clara,

her daughters, Flora and Ilse,

my father, his sister Ruth,

their cousins Lore and Peter.

The year is 1930, my father seven.

No one imagines the gassings.

Five years later Flora is gone.

Felled by infection from an asylum,

her mind diseased

before her body.

My grandfather Kurt reappears

to care for his children

though he has married

another woman.

After the war, a reunion,

for those who are left.

The U.S. their new home.

Learn a new tongue. Try to forget.

The garden still beckons but my father

returned only once.

I’ve never been, though at night

I dream of deep forests, rushing rivers

a woman’s voice calling Mein Leibschen,

a castle where everyone waltzes.

* * * * *

This poem is excerpted with permission from the author’s poetry chapbook, We Are All Refugees (New Feral Press, 2017). For more information or to order copies please contact Nancy Gerber at nancygerber79@gmail.com.

Nancy Gerber writes fiction, poetry, and essays. Her most recent book, A Way Out of Nowhere (Big Table Publishing), is a collection of short stories featuring female protagonists negotiating the complexities of relationships; it is available on Amazon.

We Are All Refugees

by Nancy Gerber

We are all refugees.

For who are we

if not seekers

of asylum

from the ghosts

of the past?

We all need

shelter, a place

to call home

as we cast our lines

toward

the distant horizon.

* * * * *

This poem is excerpted with permission from the author’s poetry chapbook, We Are All Refugees (New Feral Press, 2017). For more information or to order copies please contact Nancy Gerber at nancygerber79@gmail.com. The author wishes to thank Beate Sigriddaughter for her support.

Nancy Gerber writes fiction, poetry, and essays. Her most recent book, A Way Out of Nowhere (Big Table Publishing), is a collection of short stories featuring female protagonists negotiating the complexities of relationships; it is available on Amazon.

In the Garden, Stuttgart

by Nancy Gerber

Captive forever in black and white,

my family seated in the garden.

Great Uncle Louis, Great Grandma Clara,

her daughters, Flora and Ilse,

my father, his sister Ruth,

their cousins Lore and Peter.

The year is 1930, my father seven.

No one imagines the gassings.

Five years later Flora is gone.

Felled by infection from an asylum,

her mind diseased

before her body.

My grandfather Kurt reappears

to care for his children

though he has married

another woman.

After the war, a reunion,

for those who are left.

The U.S. their new home.

Learn a new tongue.  Try to forget.

The garden still beckons but my father

returned only once.

I’ve never been, though at night

I dream of deep forests, rushing rivers

a woman’s voice calling Mein Leibschen,

a castle where everyone waltzes.

* * * * *

This poem is excerpted with permission from the author’s poetry chapbook, We Are All Refugees (New Feral Press, 2017). For more information or to order copies please contact Nancy Gerber at nancygerber79@gmail.com. The author wishes to thank Beate Sigriddaughter for her support.

Nancy Gerber writes fiction, poetry, and essays. Her most recent book, A Way Out of Nowhere (Big Table Publishing), is a collection of short stories featuring female protagonists negotiating the complexities of relationships; it is available on Amazon.

Inn, San Francisco

by Nancy Gerber

Ghostly faces stare at us --

sepia eyes imprisoned

in glass mahogany frames.

Grim lips speak of mourning.

Sons and daughters lost to typhus, 

ravages of the expedition west.

Women wearing stiff poplin dresses, 

men dressed in midnight suits

gaze from the walls in envy  

while we recline.  On crimson sofas,

we drink coffee from porcelain 

mugs, plan the rest of our day.

* * * * *

Nancy Gerber writes fiction, poetry, and essays.  Her most recent book, A Way Out of Nowhere (Big Table Publishing), is a collection of short stories featuring female protagonists negotiating the complexities of relationships, and is available on Amazon.

In Pieces

by Nancy Gerber

You

with your chiseled

good looks

blue eyes,

sharp blade.

When you

pierce

my son’s skin,

blue

in the cold O.R. light.

Remember.

He is yours just

for a moment.

His blood once fused with mine.

Now he’s prone,

asleep on cold hard metal. 

A fallen prince. 

Your hands, precise

as time

knit him together.

While I,

my heart flapping

like a barnyard

hen, wait for

the block.

* * * * *

Nancy Gerber has published fiction, poetry, and essays in various literary journals, including Mom Egg Review, Adanna, Persimmon Tree, and others.  Her newest book, a collection of short stories entitled A Way Out of Nowhere, is due out from Big Table this spring.

For Anya

by Nancy Gerber

Her name, Anya Krugovoy Silver, lined

in black in the Times obituary.

And I was jealous.

Not of her death but being so loved, the runes

of a life freed from time in the eternal

archive of history, where the past is forever fused

to the present.

She died young, Anya

age 49, her battle with breast cancer

irradiating her flesh.

She wrote through the sickness

clinging to hope and beauty,

her poems a raft in the depths of despair.

Her physical form now gone but the poems

remain, lines like veins blooming with blue life --

Dance until your body forgets

what it wants . . .

From darkening days, the light will surge and flee.

Like ghosts the words of her longing burn

inside my eyes.

* * * * *

Nancy Gerber writes fiction, poetry, and essays. Her most recent book, A Way Out of Nowhere (Big Table Publishing), is a collection of short stories featuring female protagonists negotiating the complexities of relationships, and is available on Amazon.