Poets Wear Prada|Madeline Artenberg

Madeline Artenberg [Photo Credit: N. Charatan, 2005]

Madeline Artenberg

was born in Brooklyn, NY. During 14 years of writing poetry, she has performed frequently in the NYC area, including a one-woman show on WBAR Barnard Radio, the JVC Music Festival accompanied by Nelson Alxndr on guitar and the Bowery Poetry Club, backed by The David Amram Quartet.

Her poetry has appeared in many print and online publications, such as Caprice, Absinthe Literary Review, Vernacular, Erbacce, Listening to the Birth of Crystals and NYC Big City Lit.

Madeline has won several Lyric Recovery poetry awards in recent years, a Poetry Forum prize in 2003 and was Semi-Finalist in the Fall, 2004, Margie - The American Journal of Poetry contest.

She is celebrating the recent release (July 2006) of her first book-length collection of poetry, a joint effort with fellow writer and long time friend Iris N. Schwartz, "Awakened: Poetry by Madeline Artenberg, Poetry by Iris N Schwartz" from Rogue Scholars Press. The book is available for $13.87 from the publisher. For Marilyn Jaye Lewis' Review Of AWAKENED and ordering information visit www.roguescholars.com

She has published a chapbook of poems, To the Surface (Progress Press 1998). Her chapbook is available for sale at $5 a copy. For inquiries concerning purchasing the chapbook email MadderPoet @ erols.com

FATHER'S KINGDOM

She was too beautiful under the lacy crown.
Dark curls and eyes had drawn me
across train platforms to claim her
as my bride.

How had it come to this,
beauty still present, but unyielding?
Her heart once pounded against my chest
as I opened her until it rained rosewater.

Now a vessel has ruptured—
I’ve almost died.
She has stopped bleeding—
a fearful crone guards her entrance.
I’ve lost my mate,
gained a mother,
dictating how much, how fast, how often,
stopping me in mid-bite.

I can only retreat to my porcelain kingdom,
lock the door,
spread open my Fanny Hill,
imagine her bottom under my hand,
stockings round ankles,
face turned toward me.

Here, I never stammer and blush,
worry about my job.
It is a simple kingdom:
pressure rises, it releases,
my sad heart knowing
it too will burst one day.

— Madeline Artenberg, NYC, January 9, 2006

Sundays at the Library with Father

Stacks of fiction hug you on both sides.
Past your right shoulder,
the French-inspired Memorial Arch
rises out of the Grand Army Plaza.

Your left thumb rubs the title
waiting in your jacket pocket
while you skip through some book
on the table by Sholom Aleichem or Sholem Asch.

Later at home, I search in the dirty clothes hamper
for your copy of Mr. Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.
While you nap, I lock the bathroom door,
trace your finger’s trail
past long-haired, long-legged women.

I exhale on the pages
so my breath will fly in your face
when you crack the spine.

— Madeline Artenberg, NYC, November 1993, Revised June 2004
Originally appearing in an earler version in To the Surface (Progress Press 1998).