Poems published in Jarfly Magazine

 Two poems which I began many years ago have finally found a home in the Spring issue of Jarfly Magazine.

"St. Paul’s Churchyard" is set in the colonial era graveyard of St. Paul’s Chapel, across the street from the World Trade Center site. The first version of the poem was written in the churchyard some time before 9/11.

“Fearing the Mist Near Lumberville” was inspired by a solitary walk along a country road near Lumberville, Pennsylvania. The first version of this poem was probably begun even earlier, perhaps around 1993.

Poetry from Spring 2022 In Alba, Big Windows Review and Shot Glass Journal

Several poems which will be collected in the upcoming chapbook have been published in recent months. Last Week When It Rained appears in the Winter 2022 of Alba Journal of Poetry. This journal  also published  Sappho to Gongyla and The Confusion of Katya in issue 8 back in September 2003. 

Last Week When It Rained

Last week when it rained, we were together
in my small apartment, sharing the most intimate
confessions. Despite the late hour, we continued
to uncover answers to the questions that had troubled us
for many decades. This kind of work, you said to me,
is exceptionally satisfying, and I agreed.

The Confusion of Katya
(after Akhmatova)

A river flows past
a dome of many windows.
Monks are chanting.
My sister and I hear the mass, waiting for Catherine's barge
and the sweep of her golden wheat.

On the third day the aging Tsarina rides alone through ripening fields.
She takes my grandmother's ancient hand
and on the crooked staircase
kisses my lips.

 

Sappho to Gongyla
(inspired by several fragments from the Greek)

My face was hot. My need was strong.
I saw you lifting your arms at the edge of the sea.

Did you truly expect to touch the sky?

You did not glance in my direction.
You did not hear me breathing as I breathed your name.

When the moon sets, I will still be here counting the stars.

Big Windows Review published the poem Purple Sun and the flash fiction New Years Eve on the Q in their May 2022 edition. This journal also published What You Said in German was Not About Kissing in the May 2021 issue.

Purple Sun 

 

I am back where I started. You are walking 

toward me with a glass of water in your hand. 

I look downward at your bare feet in the grass.

I understand that there are shoes you have never worn.

 

I know that everything might have been different.

I might not have crossed the street. You might have told me 

to go away. There might be two moons in the sky 

or a purple sun. Nod your head if you agree.

What You Said in German was Not About Kissing

Sharing a ham & cheese hero with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise and a bag of those cheese waffie things you liked on a hillside at the Bronx Botanical Garden was more fun than meeting you in that trattoria on the Piazza Navona with the waiter who spoke such good English because you were wearing the blue dress that buttoned down the front and we were caught in the rain but when we got back to the apartment on 189th street it was hotter than ever and we dragged the mattress up onto the roof and ate pepperoni pizza from downstairs where everybody spoke Italian to you but you didn’t know a word except maybe prego and scusi and although you took German at Hunter it wasn’t much help when we rode the D train to Central Park where the Met was performing something from Wagner, maybe Tannhauser which goes on forever but I loved you because you had read all of The Magic Mountain and called it Der Zauberberg and sometimes I look at you and want to tell you that Dominic’s has been closed for years and there’s probably no one else except maybe Barbara Kaufman who remembers the night when you said something in German and I thought you said “Kiss me.”

This poem was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Big Windows Review.

This month, Shot Glass Journal of Short Poetry published I Have No Memory, written in Austin last year.

I Have No Memory

 

 

I have no memory of getting on this bus.

I am sure I will recognize one of these streets eventually.

I will get off the bus and have something to eat.

Yesterday I drank coffee in the place that you loved on South Congress Street.

I ate the same kind of tacos with egg and chorizo that you always ordered.

Later, I will meet with old friends on zoom. 

They will tell me about people who are not dead.

I have no memory of getting on this bus.
I am sure I will recognize one of these streets eventually.
I will get off the bus and have something to eat.
Yesterday I drank coffee in the place that you loved on South Congress Street.
Later, I will meet with old friends on zoom. 
They will tell me about people who are still living.

That, you tell me, is true poetry

 Published in Sledgehammer Lit 

The Edge of the Bed

 

 

 

At first, we are waiting on a large terrace. A clatter of plates.

Distant footsteps. All the languages are foreign. Everyone has a dog.

 

Twice as many people as expected are here. 

We are on a list but not the most important one.

 

We are asked to leave. By whose authority, I loudly demand.

People turn to stare. Some mutter. Perhaps this is all a mistake.

 

You point out inconsistencies in the man’s vocabulary.                                                     

It appears that he is reading from a script on his cell phone.

 

We are sitting on the edge of a king-sized bed.

Our foreheads are touching, or possibly our hands.

 

We review what has happened. We seek explanations.

None of our theories are an exact fit for the circumstances.

 

I ask if other people always finish your sentences.

That, you tell me, is true poetry.

 

 

 

 

 

Equivocations and Mistranslations

Poetry collected from another era, a world before the Pandemic. Full of love's equivocations and many mistranslations of such 20th century poets as Pablo Neruda, Anna Akhmatova, Antonio Machado, Cesar Vallejo, Paul Celan and others. Also, work inspired by figures as disparate as Sappho and Saint John of the Cross. 

Admiring the Mist Near Lumberville

I admire the mist

that concentrates in hollow places.

I walk in the fields

when it begins to rain.

The trees are cold and damp.

The hillsides are terribly steep.

A man was killed once

when a branch came crashing in a sudden storm.

I am aware that landscapes

can be dangerous.

I enter them with caution.

You are my entire life.

Heat Lightning At Montauk

How you feel about oceans and storms

is why we are waiting, alone

in the dark

as heat lightning flashes

from cloud to cloud

in the pregnant air.

The storms within you

like those in the clouds

are as silent to me

as the thunder, the rain

falling indifferently

over the sea.

Possibly in Another World

Possibly in another world the streets are less noisy.

Here in this world my heart has become faithful to you.

You point out the bills I have not paid.

You bring good things home from the store.

I praise God with every drink of water.

I suggest that you eat more vegetables and fruit

We walk together in various places.

Once we saw the machinery of ancient canals.

The wind from across the inlet was especially warm.

Our footprints were the ones that went into the water.

There were always hills to which I could raise my eyes.

I can imagine us walking upon those hills.

We Drank Something Difficult to Name

after Paul Celan’s “Die Jahre Von Dir Zu Mir”

We drank something difficult to name

and lived in the house of forgetting.

Your eyes were the color of skies,

your long hair like many autumns.

I ate strawberries from your mouth,

I breathed air from your lungs.

And finally I saw you, sister,

in that overwhelming light.

It is of our love that I am speaking.

In These Wandering Hours

       After Ramon Jimenez’ “En Estas Horas Vagas”

In these wandering hours

that surround the night

the sky grows red,

old histories reappear.

No matter how many years

have passed

the memory of your eyes

opens my arms

in the middle of the street.