Poetry

There are men like these, who stand above the loft and gloss of downtown rhetoric, who hold for us a quiet surplus, and think— not of present need and use—but, of what is necessary in dire times. There are those who go unnoticed, apart from the general chat, who have in mind the words we…

—translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak We are children of our era, the era is political. All affairs, day and night, yours, ours, theirs, are political affairs. Like it or not, your genes have a political past, your skin a political cast, your eyes a political aspect. What you say, has a resonance, what…

Ah, so there you are, somewhere between the Demerol and the morphine, silently emptying my catheter jug. Don’t do that, I want to say, but my voice is lost from two weeks on the ventilator. Baby Girl, I want to say hello, say I know your name, say how much I’ve always loved you, but…

If death is a rest stop, a sweet state Line, where we pause in the poppies As our souls check the map, will I be Spared that recurring dream of youth, The one when I rose from my warm bed, And appeared reciting from My Weekly Reader In front of the whole third grade? Will…

— translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak Reality demands we also state the following: life goes on. It does so at Cannae and Borodino, at Kosovo Polje and in Guernica. There is a gas station in a small plaza in Jericho, and freshly painted benches near Bila Hora. Letters travel between Pearl Harbor and…

There’s a stealthy, sort of leopard- like knocking at my door tonight I half wish were you, but the sky’s grainy violet and no one’s out there loitering darkly like a dent. Know what’s going down? Total eclipse of the moon, Kid—it’s pretty dim out, just the gas station’s block of light like the landmark…

I search the pond’s portrayal of my face for my father. This woman’s brow, so smooth, disdains its heritage and hides the truth. Its lineaments reveal almost no trace of his. But I must clear an open space to mirror him in, because since his death I feel as distant as “map-isopleth,” which is, I’ve…

Where a love-dock jutted into the Narrows I took turns with friends at a crack of light someone scraped into the one black window of The Eye-Full Tower, and saw through the tight crush of men a woman dancing naked, her sequined bridle glittering down her breasts drenched in luminous sweat and smoke-haze. From one…

for Tim Wakefield On the mound you stand—just so— exhale—so—throw at the same spot over and over. There’s only one way to toss a knuckleball, near-impossibly simple; your fingernails flick it at the distant lozenge of the catcher’s mitt, but it must be thrown so evenly the ball won’t spin at all, sixty feet six…