Possibilities
In the first parallel universe I took my father’s advice studied pharmacy at the University of Buffalo moved to New Jersey to work for Pfizer and have lived here ever since. In another one Sister Emiliette managed to convince me during the eighth grade retreat. Now I awaken each morning at six, put on the white and black, go down to chapel take my place at the organ. In May I’ll make my final vows. In the next I came of age amid the lilacs of Christ Church Meadow watching the spring regatta. After one year of walks among the domes and spires I decided to stay. Now I live...
Read MoreA Neighbor’s Death
They fall like toy sentinels, one by one, before the entrance to the battered door that traps in heat and keeps away the hoar frost of impending grief. Youth’s taped rerun of first bliss is worn. Spring’s warm, schoolmarm sun now sports the wan demeanor of a store clerk. Life grants me just enough light to pore over receipts before the workday’s done and the store closes. Former bustling streets are empty and their neon signs torn down along with delis selling ice and sweets. Grown kids have moved their own kids out of town. I’m at the crossroads where the graveyard...
Read MoreTonight’s the Night We Begin!
From tar roof tops people lean and watch in the soft summer afternoon heat below them I crusade in full-color 3-D through the holy land of NYC St. Mark’s Place across town I am a warrior bound to take back CBGB’s from the unbelievers I am a warrior bound (and there’s Mojo’s the scene five years later of our last fight ever, when for your birthday I bought you for your birthday I bought you What the hell was I thinking? I bought you a cheap Chinatown red dragon night light and it only got worse from there) The sidewalk grate cuts loose a roar a...
Read MoreIsraeli Morning
On us the fervent sun set on my 6 weeks of edenic knowing the eastern loss of our new mourning, a disc eclipsed by the Mount of Gilboa (the place of ancient dying– that of Saul, not Ruth) you and I sharing of the M’sheekha, of liberation and rebirth, but our friendship closing, lost in wine and straw in the shallow draw above Kibbutz Sde Nahum ——–a temptation lurked, a warm drink, and a bedded look– thankfully not to take; In the last night for the...
Read MoreTo Moon or Elsewhere
translated by Soma Roy Let us go to Moon or to Mars * No empty space remains here. On railway-tracks, in between the Gulmohors, Atop coconut trees How did so many skyscrapers spring up? * Even a small piece of land is not available here. Let us leave the grasslands then, and fly into the sky. There we will build a thatched roof – our own dream house. That is better, That is the best. * Despair be kept aside, * The whole sky is there for us. Translator Soma Roy was born in 1959 and brought up at Chandernagore, then earned a master’s degree in chemistry from Burdwan...
Read MoreBlack Cherry
Used for jelly and wine, wild cherry syrup for coughs from the bark, the wood red-brown with whitish sapwood, resistant to decay, durable, the small cherries are called drupes, leave yellowed stones. Found in oak hickory woods, not here. I would re-arrange the world this morning, bring the trees walking towards me like Orpheus or MacBeth. Instead the words of those saw-toothed leaves float down about me, and a forest of silent sound swallows the light of here and now. Wild Transitions...
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