weeks

November 25, 2022

LISA, ONCE

A phone call, a lawyer’s clerk:
Can you tell me about Lisa Landesman?
I pause for that is a name I have
not heard in forty years, save
in a poem I once wrote,
now long forgotten.

She was my sister for two
or three weeks, adopted like I was,
and then Mike, my then father
dropped dead of a massive
heart attack and she was soon gone.

We were Federal adoptions, our
birthplace under Federal law, not
getting its own for two decades,
and her adoption wasn’t final so she
was re-placed and never replaced.

She won’t inherit as I will from
my cousin who died having no
siblings, spouse, children,
nieces or nephews, who left
no will, who left only kind memories.

August 11, 2022

CURFEW

We sat in the cramped kitchen
huddled around the stove
the open oven door spreading
a faint warmth that barely
slid through the winter chill.
The bare bulb in the ceiling
strained and flickered
fighting to hold as the generators
were shut down, and darkness
enveloped our small world.
The sky was lit by the flares
and the odor of exploding shells
seeped through the towel
sealed windows covered
in the tattered bedsheets
too thin to afford warmth.
Ibrahim had been gone two weeks
sneaking out of the city
to join his brothers in Gorazde
or Tuzla, or wherever it was
that they were struggling
to save what little was left.
We huddled under the small table
and dreamed of the taste
of fresh bread, or even pork.
In the morning he would run
among the craters in the streets
in search of the convoy
and the handouts, which we
would raven as the sun set
over our war torn hell.

First published in Legal Studies Forum, Vol. XXX, No. 1 & 2, 2006

August 6, 2022

A WELL REHEARSED SILENCE

Of course there is something I ought
to say, moments like this require it,
it goes without saying, painfully.

I practiced lines for hours, rehearsed
in my dreams for weeks, knew
for years I’d be rendered mute.

My tongue swells, threatening
to escape my mouth or take refuge
deep within my esophagus.

Your silence is only compounding
my anxiety, how can I, a man
of words, be rendered silent

by the thought of speaking to you,
of telling you that I finally now
joyously have what I feared I wouldn’t ever.

A wife and lover deserves
better than this.

April 14, 2021

WAITING, STILL

I stood on the corner
waiting patiently for you.

It seemed like hours.

It was probably minutes
but Einstein was right
about relativity also.

You never arrived,
but I hadn’t expected
you to do so, that was
the nature of us.

I will wait again
in two weeks.

Same corner as usual,
but an hour earlier.

You will not show up
and will offer the same
excuse you do always.

Why do you assume
being dead excuses
your duties as the parent
I never got to meet?

August 2, 2019

A LEG UP

We agree we must
learn the rules, to master
the game, practice until
the moves are second nature.
We have three weeks
to do all of this, then
Place the game box
back on the shelf
to be discovered
and taken down, opened
spread out on the table,
impatience controlling.
Want to ensure
that one of us will win,
at least at first, though
we know that in time
she will handily best us
as she always does.
But just this once
we hope to get a leg up
on our eight-year-old granddaughter.