Pearl Stein
Selinsky
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Pearl Stein Selinsky was raised and educated in New York. She
continued her education in California. After she retired from
teaching in the Los Angeles School District, she moved to
Sacramento, where she earned her Master’s Degree in Creative
Writing at California State University, Sacramento. While there,
she won First Place in both the Bazzanella and Room of
One’s Own competitions, sponsored by the English Department.
In addition, she has won a number of prizes in poetry
competitions, and has served as a judge in such competitions, as
well. Her work has appeared in Vintage 45, Poetry
(Chicago), Ekphrasis, Poetry Now, Poet’s Guild, Zambomba, 33
Review, The Prairie Star, Nostalgia, Mediphors, Poetry Depth
Quarterly, Tule Review, Rattlesnake Review, and others, as
well as in anthologies including Only in Her Shoes, To Honor
a Teacher, and The Sacramento Anthology: One Hundred
Poems. She may be reached at
pvus@sbcglobal.net.
VICTOR SELINSKY attended Otis Art Institue and received a
Master’s Degree in Art from California State University, Los
Angeles. Prior to his retirement, he was a high school art
teacher, as well as an instructor of figure drawing at Pierce
Community College in Los Angeles. He has exhibited drawings and
paintings in both Los Angeles and Sacramento, including several
solo exhibits and numerous invitational group shows. In recent
years, he was an Elderhostel teacher in Southern California,
providing instruction in drawing and art history. He continues
to pursue his many interests in the local Sacramento Arts
environment.
Unfortunately, Vic passed away April 25, 2006. In her grief,
Pearl wrote a chapbook, Vic & Me, which was published by
Rattlesnake Press in January, 2007. Here are two poems
from that collection:
Pearl Stein Selinsky Poems
WHO KNOWS
how to tally my
survival skills,
to know
what clamber-grab
at mountain
out-crops—
dizzied, looking
down to where
I’ve been…
realizing:
look only up
to see the way…
and reaching,
touching,
time to time,
a hand,
a shoulder…
taking hold until
the next
effort up
when I must
pull
my own weight
regardless of
whatever waits
below. |
PATIENCE
I watch a stately goose
parade before
her own reflection
on the chrome bumper
of a truck.
No sound. Just fixed
attention
to that feathered sight,
her own lonely self,
the mate
crushed and trashed
by traffic months before.
She persists, believes
that it is him she sees
and like so many widows
who speak to photographs,
keep clothes and closets,
a dedicated mausoleum—
this goose, who mates for life,
will not admit to any other
possibility
beyond her faith.
She simply walks and waits.
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SpiralChap Poems by Pearl Stein Selinsky
WHAT LOVE IS
The year the amaryllis
never bloomed,
children didn’t send cards
for Mother’s Day
nor birthdays nor for any
holiday.
Partners rumbled off
to their own private
wars
no notice
simply gone.
Empty,
on a spectral plane
of nowhere,
nothingness,
those waiting knew
beyond
the sour taste
of dwindled
expectation,
thin across
the far horizon line,
each solitary
each, loving still,
knew within
what love is.
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MESSAGE FROM
AN ARTIST’S MODEL
She watches from the wall
where we hung the etching
of her seamed face
five years ago.
Eighty-year-old rheumy eyes
stare from darkened caves
sunk in wrinkles, deep
and corrugated, fold by fold,
as on a tortoise-neck.
I love that face, her chin
resting on her hand, knotted
bun of hair, almost Arlésienne
in style, hint of ribbon there.
Pensive, in a nimbus of
tranquillity and, glowing
from those eyes, a hint
of wisdom only age imparts.
She stares at me
as she did for him that day
and, through her modeling years.
When he first sketched her,
his age nineteen—and through
all time in drafty studios,
each artist working
as the model strikes a momentary
pose, each racing in the allocated
span to paper-place a face,
a torso twist, to make her his
unique vision unlike any other
in the room…my man who
caught her so, who drew her
many times through fifty years,
who saw her model as a girl,
who watched her age…
who set her kindly on the page,
endowing her with beauty
which transcends the cruel cuts
of growing old… |
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