Tag Archives: Dianne Stepp

CPR Volume 22, Issue 2

Wealth
by Dianne Stepp

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It was an ordinary day riding home on the bus,
the sun slanting low through the window
where I sat reading a book, listening
with half an ear to the murmur of commuters,
the ring of the pulled bell, the driver
calling out the stops. I didn’t notice her
at all until she took the seat in front of me,
until the sun darted through the glass
to lay its brush in the deep plums of her lavish hair,
igniting tiny filaments of gold, molten reds,
burnished umbers, causing them to arc, crackle
a firestorm of snapping lights.
I remember how my body woke then,
how I wanted to dance, stand in the aisle,
shout and wave my arms, everyone to look.
And when her hand reached for the cord,
I remember how desolate I felt, yet grateful,
even then, when I was still ignorant,
how rarely, a gift like this,
how randomly, over a lifetime.

 

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 22, Issue 2.

Dianne SteppA retired counselor, Dianne Stepp lives with her husband in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies including High Desert Journal, TAMSEN.org, Comstock Review, Clackamas Literary Review, and Cries of the Spirit. A graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program in Poetry, she is a recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship and author of a chapbook, “Half-Moon of Clay.”

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CPR Volume 22, Issue 1

Patrimony
by Dianne Stepp

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Siletz River, 1948

My dad thinks the river is his, or he is the river’s.

He ferries us upstream on the tide most weekends after the war,
his knee on the tiller, that half-moon sailing from the quick of his thumb

as he slips his tackle into the current.
He lifts one finger to his lips to say silence in the boat,

and the bank slips by, an open window to another life—
muskrat, voles, the dark mouths of their burrows.

Alders and willows dip their leaves into the stream.
Around a bend, a startle of wings, the cries of the kingfisher bird.

The morning’s mist rises over the river’s silver face
and I take it in, filling my lungs with the sounds the river breathes.

The river opens a space for us as we go,
the vee behind the boat fanning to show where we’ve been.

My dad motions me to the bow to watch for snags and deadheads.
Teaches me to flag with my arms,

and I become first boat hand,
my mother keeping watch over my brother playing with his toys.

At the riffles I remove my shoes and pull the boat across the gravel bar
so we can reach his favorite holes upstream.

Tackle, rod, reel, line, lure. Coho, cutthroat, blueback.
The river becomes my life’s lexicon.

Gull, heron, jay. The thrash of spawn.
Riffle, sandbar, salmonberry. Minnows in the shallows.

Meander. Loop, bend, bank, the trill of a creek.
This is what my dad will give me.

Until I wrote these words, I didn’t know it.

 

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 22, Issue 1.

Dianne SteppA retired counselor, Dianne Stepp lives with her husband in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies including High Desert Journal, TAMSEN.org, Comstock Review, Clackamas Literary Review, and Cries of the Spirit. A graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program in Poetry, she is a recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship and author of a chapbook, “Half-Moon of Clay.”

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CPR Volume 18, Issue 2

Hunger
by Dianne Stepp

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after In Memory’s Kitchen: A Legacy
from the Women of Terezin

They dream of yeast and goose fat, dough plaited to dough,
the old women of Theresienstadt.

Linzer torte, pirogen, goulash
with noodles.

Under the dead stars,
beside the stunned windows,

the blank belly of the stove.

They argue about hazelnuts in chocolate cake,
whether ground or chopped.

Whose version of coffee caramels.

From freezing bunks at night, they lament Krieg—
the food substitutes of war—

ersatz coffee, honey, egg optional in the strudel.

Someone calls for her favorite galantine of chicken,
garnished with caviar and paprika.

They press poems between the recipes. Letters,
Yahrzeit notes for the dead,

thread the pages to a book, hide it like a stolen loaf.

The daughter into whose hands years later
a stranger presses this parcel

trembles to touch it—

cries of apricot, apples, the small mouths of berries.
 

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 18, Issue 2.

Dianne SteppA retired counselor, Dianne Stepp lives with her husband in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies including High Desert Journal, TAMSEN.org, Comstock Review, Clackamas Literary Review, and Cries of the Spirit. A graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program in Poetry, she is a recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship and author of a chapbook, “Half-Moon of Clay.”

See all items about Dianne Stepp

Visit Dianne Stepp’s contributors page.