Posts for June 30, 2022 (page 7)

Through my mask-fogged glasses, a haze of poets
gathers for a reading in real life.  Though missing
the Zoom-labeled names below their faces, I know
this is the flock that has sustained me online
for the past two, three years.  Tonight we read only
eyes atop unfamiliar bodies, gestures.  I try to
make out the voices I have heard virtually but
sounds are muffled and mouths are missing.
My Covid-era teacher comes forward, exclaims
“Your eyes!  You are Linda!”   Despite all she signifies
we dare not hug, we are still in the red zone
and everyone is getting it.   My beloved first teacher
is here, too.  Not seen outside the screen
for years, I almost look past her, thrown off by
trimmer shape, mask and lighter hair.  Some variant
of Blind Man’s Buff this is, or of life in burkas, yet
unpracticed at searching eyes for recognition. 
Someone glances as if we know each other.
Maybe so.  We offer up our names, realize
we have never met in person or online either
but have read each other’s posted work for years.  
How I want to indulge this chance meeting
like the old days, talk unmasked,  hear her voice
unmuffled.  But we content ourselves with smiling
eyes, assured at least that we are living beings.  

The grief of woman

We fight, two kites
on an island moonlit and bright, we shimmer into sprites
you pink and I green to my delight
as we venture into dimmer timber at night

and I end up at the edge of a black lake in a black forest
the perimeter of everything has a purple that is fluoresce
nine amorphous moons hang and interchange in patterns that are porous
in like out like yin like yang while the wind includes the singing of a chorus

and the entire isle turns black with a sky that’s red
it swirls and the then mix in my head,
suddenly turns into a cube of two sides blue and white instead

out of me they have fled,
all the words I’ve ever read
forever they spin around me in a spread,
that’s continuously over fed

Out of sight

and no one knows
how we move inward
where no one sees us.

Like wind through willows,
we move toward
each other–no one sees us.

Like lovers, we write 
poetry upon our bodies
when no one sees us.

We embrace in sunlight,
& relish week knees. These
times when no one sees us,

we make love.

What kind of soup did my father enjoy as a child,
did he clean his plate,
what did he hide under the big pillow,
at what word of the story did he fall asleep,
did the bombings truly frighten him.
I’ll never learn any of this,
my fatherland has been irrevocably lost
The air is so desolate
that I clearly hear the schedule of the train station
and the harbor siren embraces me.

Author: Marin Bodakov
Translator: Katerina Stoykova

I’ve come home so many times before …
From every type of trip.
It always spells the end
Of something different
And a return to all that’s familiar.
But you know what Heraclitus said
About never stepping in the
Same river twice.
He didn’t say it to me,
And I’m no expert on rivers,
But I get his drift.
I’ve come home again,
But I’m not completely the same
Man who left.
Maybe 99.9% the same, but hey …
0.1% of a river is
A lot of water.

So this I guess is where it ends,
this month together planting seeds. 
Too little time with you, my friends,
to tend this garden pulling weeds. 

Till next year then, the first of June,
I hope you’ll let the stanzas flow. 
It won’t be long but very soon
until we make our garden grow. 

GRANDPA LOVES YOU

In a ray of sun
particles of dust shimmer
whispering you’re next

The red-headed Irish girl at the hostel
in Lugano travelling with the horse
she groomed. The Anaïs Nin fan
in Perugia who handwashed her fine sweaters.
The American who said she never washes her face

and carries no money. The girl from Rapid City
who let me play “Piece of My Heart” on her stereo
all summer. The staffers with whom I camped under the stars
where it’s easy to share hopes. We woke
to buffao grazing in front of the lodge.

The tour bus driver who gave two of us waiters
a ride into Custer for a night of jitterbugging.
The long-haired fellow from the Gold Pan Saloon
with whom I careened through the Black Hills
until dawn on a spiritual Sunday morning.

After my Karmann Ghia’s engine locked up
and two vets pushed me off the highway,
I stayed with a girl I  met at Wendy’s in Sandusky.
That night in bed we discussed “The Turn of the Screw” 
for class the next day. The two guys with whom I rode 

from Iowa City to NYC. They enjoyed Saturday
morning cartoons and lost their way crossing 
the bridge. They did the driving and I provided massages.
The hugs at the airport with AP Lit essay readers.
The poets who shared their souls.