Heartshapes
Tonight, seven course dinner, wine & jazz
But what about tomorrow?
Your husband & my wife & no money
We’re pleased to sleep hard
Until morning collides with time
And you run off to the gym in a huff
And a job you hate
Not enough time for me or love
I pack my pajamas and curse you
Then you’re right back
Knocking at your own apartment door
Not feeling good about how
The sublime evening ended
We head over to the park to talk it out
But never make it to the carousel
Cold winds turn us around
We sit on the steps of a stranger’s house
Eat oranges. Sort out the negative
repercussions of good fortune
You, the daughter of a Russian mayor
Me, the son of a U.S. attorney
Victims of our own rebellions
We’re poets and green card bohemians
Too proud to take out loans
When some lady in a white Audi rolls up
Rolls down the window, shouts, “Get off my porch!”
We take our rinds further down the street
Find charity on the stoop of a Chinese man
with a good-natured smile, who says,
“I only charge $20 dollars to sit”
We walk on
It’s Chinese New Year!
Dragons dance down Irving St.
Firecrackers explode in our ears
We jump into one another’s arms
Fear keeps us together
Then after a dishwater noodle soup
And fresh spring rolls
We meander back to the exile of your bed
Fall into another senseless revolution.
Heartshapes 2
And what would I wish for?
A pink salmon grazing on the moon?
Heart-shaped leather box from Firenze
stained with Christ’s blood?
Second-hand watch that will not tick or tock?
Beggar slaughtered in a midnight grave?
Car that won’t stop?
Bookmarks?
Operating manuals?
Prank phone calls?
No I would not…
Daily Readings at the Lake
with Virgil Suarez
Was she ever in love with me?
I believe she was
Will she love me in the future?
I believe she will
It’s another day like Thursday but earlier
in the week. A hawk swoops down
on an unsuspecting snake.
Hunting Season
Winter golden Maiden Cane
Gunshots across the lake
Don’t be alarmed
They’re only killing ducks.
November 24, 2016
The Blind
We could not see what we could not kill
Ten ducks and a hundred gunshots pointed at the lake
The hunt our ungodly intention
A brutal mist concealed the slaughter
It was so good to see those creatures back again
Summer was hot and lonely, saturated with biting bugs
When nothing dabbled and sighed through the lilies
Then came the fall migration. First the great blue heron
returned to stalk the muskrats, then eagles to steal
what the great blue heron battered in high grass
The osprey perched on dilapidated martin house
tilting on the shore, then went fishing,
while seventeen Anhinga perched on floating islands
of dead wood, dried their feathers against the sun
We could not see what we could not kill
Ten ducks and a hundred gunshots pointed at the lake
The hunt our ungodly intention
The brutal mist concealed the slaughter
Hunting with daddy and grandpa, a family tradition,
bringing a cargo of elephant tusks home
from a family safari to sell for ivory or hang
as trophies over the mantel. And how we came
from generations of soldiers, justice dying
on a beach faraway, and there were trophies then
as well, bayonets of breathless peace, as if that made war
and killing great and honorable. We wore the medals
of successful campaigns and assassinations
Something next to godliness. Bittersweet death
And how we used to go on family expeditions
hunting runaway slaves. Our nation lived on this
We could not see what we could not kill
We could not see what we could not kill
Ten ducks and a hundred gunshots pointed at the lake
The hunt our ungodly intention
The brutal mist concealed the slaughter
We could not see what we could not kill
We could not see what we could not kill
In the ruin of humankind and nature
The lesser proud and desiccated breath of the weak
We have seen enough of murder, seen enough of lust
We pray for a naked season of eternal blindness.
Secret
It meant nothing
but we were forbidden to speak of it
Who said those things
only meant to hurt someone
No one was deceived but the storyteller
Because the secret held no power
Yet I must come straight out with it
Speak so it will be nothing but poetry
She is my secret
Everyone knows she is.
Click to Visit
Art from Michael Rothenberg
Fiction from Michael Rothenberg
Interview with Michael Rothenberg conducted by Wanda Phipps
Michael Rothenberg Comes Alive!
Drawing The Shade (Dos Madres Press)
The Pillars (Quaranzine Press)
MICHAEL ROTHENBERG is co-founder of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, co-founder of Poets In Need, a non-profit 501(c) 3, assisting poets in crisis, and editor and publisher of BigBridge.org. His most recent books of poetry include Drawing The Shade (Dos Madres Press), The Pillars (Quaranzine Press) and I Murdered Elvis (Alien Buddha Press). In Memory of A Banyan Tree, Poems of the Outside World, 1985-2020, will be published by Lost Horse Press next year. Rothenberg currently lives in Tallahassee, Fla., where he is Florida State University Libraries Poet in Residence.