Georgia Ressmeyer
CONTACT:
Email: georgiaressmeyer@gmail.com
Website: www.georgiaressmeyer.com
BIO:
A native of Long Island, New York, Georgia Ressmeyer has lived happily in Wisconsin since 1974, first as an attorney and now as a poet. She taught English at a women’s junior college in Tokyo, Japan, served as a staff attorney with legal services programs in Wisconsin and Minnesota, worked as a legal consultant and grant-writer for feminist groups in Milwaukee, and for eighteen years provided defense representation to individuals diagnosed with mental illnesses and disabilities. She lives near Lake Michigan in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
Twice a Pushcart Prize nominee, Georgia has published numerous poems, an award-winning poetry chapbook, Today I Threw My Watch Away (Finishing Line Press, 2010), and two full-length poetry collections, Waiting to Sail (Black River Press, 2014) and Home/Body (Pebblebrook Press, 2017). Her new chapbook, Leading a Life, is available for preorder from watersedgepress.com and will be released in September, 2021.
PUBLICATIONS:
Today I Threw My Watch Away, Finishing Line Press, 2010
Waiting to Sail, Black River Press, 2014
Home/Body, Pebblebrook Press, 2017
Leading a Life, Water's Edge Press, September 2021; available for preorder at watersedgepress.com
Poetry
Poet-Dog
I am a Poet-dog
yipping at the ankles of
the Sun and Moon
for word-scraps
from their table.
When Wind begins
scattering morsels
I leap and catch
the choicest ones
to keep me running.
If they are dry
I drop them in
my bowl of Lake
and they get soggy.
It is a mean
existence, all abject
begging for mere
jots and mutters.
I am a poet-Dog,
perpetually hungry.
First published in
Wisconsin People & Ideas
Inside Out
Shake winter if you can —
like an old rug in a mudroom
flecked with birdseed waste
once cased in ice that your
boots tracked into the house.
Shake it over snow, so any
tiny, unused seeds can grow —
only to be weeded out by you
in spring when mud’s the
clutter that you bring inside.
Boots, snow, birdseed, hungry
doves, grubby mats, sprouting
plants, mud-caked clogs —
you go from season to season
acquainting and reacquainting
the outside with the inside,
the inside with the out. Do you
doubt the value of this exchange?
No, you don’t — not while
you’re able to heft a rug and
stomp a shoe, listen to birds
chirp, whistle, coo, trill. This
is your part in life: track mud
and waste into the house, shake
the mat, put fresh seed out.
First published in Peninsula Pulse
Honorable Mention, The Hal Grutzmacher
Writers’ Expose, 2013