Jef Leisgang

CONTACT:
Email: jefleisgang@gmail.com

BIO:
Jef Leisgang grew up in Kenosha, resided in Milwaukee and elsewhere for many years, and now lives in Fort Atkinson. His poems have appeared in Bramble, Flint Hills Review, Free Lunch, North Coast Review, Plainsongs, The Solitary Plover, Steam Ticket, Verse Wisconsin, and a few illustrious WFOP poets calendars. He has also been the recipient of a Milwaukee County Emerging Artist grant for his fiction. Jef manages a bookstore on Madison’s East Side and is chuffed to be part of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.

Poetry

Safeguard

In all the drawers of my father’s dresser,
he kept an unwrapped bar of soap nestled among

the neatly folded undershirts, underwear, and socks,
an odd pairing to a boy, but to my father maybe

the most natural thing in the world. Whether a handed-down
habit from his own father, a lesson drilled in by the Marines,

or his own quaint notion of cleanliness, I never learned the origin
of this small extravagance. I only knew that when we put our arms

around each other before he left for the auto plant each morning,
he bore the faint perfume of those private, wooden places,

those contained spaces that lingered like
a distant memory, woven into fabric.

Walking On the Edge of Water

Making for the unblemished center
of the quarry lake after fresh snow,
I ignore the slush at my feet until I hear
a crisp rimshot from the otherworld below,
a massive mouth preparing admittance,
a jawbone popping in echo.

I was out there once one summer day,
floating in the eerie, emerald eye,
the blue sky hovering overhead like
the mind of God, the rusted cables
coiled below, ready to strike.
This winter morning, however,
it’s the perimeter I’ll hike.