Deborah Gerrish

Deborah Gerrish’s poetry books include Indeed Jasmine, Light in Light, The Language of Paisley, and The Language of Rain. “A Precis on the Stuff We Breathe,” was a finalist in the The Comstock Review Poetry Contest, 2024, and “Tulip Farm,” was a featured poetry film in Moving Words, 2023. She holds an EDD from Rutgers University, an MFA in Poetry from Drew University, taught English in the NJ public schools, and teaches workshops at Fairleigh Dickinson University.  Her fifth poetry collection will be forthcoming in 2026.

The Blue Bicycle (POEM)

Her feathered pigtails flap faster

and faster as she leans in. Her wheels

launch across the neighborhood,

a blue-jay winging swirls of spring.

In pedal pushers and navy pea coat,

her neck draped with mother’s butter-

yellow Monarch scarf, she pushes

off the three-speed Schwinn, spinning

spokes like a lit sun catcher, freewheeling

the hill toward wild animal-shaped clouds,

while her handlebar streamers fly out

to lasso a thousand stars in the twilight sky.