Poetry

If the men from town call in the crux of night, then they are calling to misinform you. If they say come quick your brother’s in jail, then that’s not what they mean. If you go to town but your brother’s not in jail, then this time he cannot be saved. If your brother cannot…

They came to arrest me For kissing a Lieutenant’s wife while kissing A sergeant’s sister while romancing with the mother Of the assistant undersecretary of state: My shoes in front of my life I run— Soldiers arrest our women And the flag is the towel the wind dries its hands on. I need a drink….

She sucks at a cigarette butt and yells to a soldier, “Go home! You haven’t kissed your wife since Noah was a sailor!” Madame Momma Galya Armolinskaya, what would we give to ride beside you in a yellow taxi, away from funerals two windows open, throwing milk bottles at police check points? Momma Galya Armolinskaya,…

Now each of us is a witness stand: Vasenka eyes us watch four soldiers throw Alfonso Barabinski on the sidewalk. We let them take him, all of us cowards. What we don’t say we carry in our suitcases, coat pockets, our nostrils. Across the street they wash him with fire hoses. First he screams, then…

No one knows why deafness came. But some say the city of Vasenka awoke and refused to hear soldiers. In the name of Petya, a deaf boy killed by soldiers, we refused. That day, when soldiers complimented girls in the alley, the girls just slid by, pointing to their ears and shaking their heads. That…

The day before their wedding, Alfonso and Sonya beat drums in the Central Square opening the puppet show. When the deaf boy, Petya, sneezes in the first row, one of the puppets, a police sergeant, collapses, its wooden ear in the snow. The puppet stands, and shakes his nose at the audience. An army jeep…

I thought I would make a short list of what is not a feeling. Birds are not feelings. Birds eating cherries from the tree are not feelings. This is the best entertainment, I say to myself, watching birds eating cherries, and now I have made a feeling. The robin’s beak glistens with the sticky juice….

How deeply I drink up home catalogs day— they shine open my diorama and teach me to lift my tiny arms to hang the dime as a mirrory thing upon my shoebox wall. Here’s a sunshine page that reads, “A home expands via the wise use of mirrors wherever you wish for a window.” I’ve…

By candlelight the house went down. It’s no wonder the rats won’t come sleep in my newly rented corners…though to me a gathering of low creatures would be a luminous, a concordant, a thing. Be slow to wish extinct the ugly rodent beasts. You can’t know when all that’s theirs will be more than yours,…