by Gerard Malanga

What then of the pictures he left behind in his sleep
the mounds of tabloids bundled and yellowed
the looseleaf binders falling out at the seams
from wear & tear, from decrepit old age
the soft pathways hardened and winding their way
like a lost serpent through the one – bedroom flat
till the bathroom became verboten and fuzzy.
What then of the pictures consigned back to the hot, airless days
the flora and fauna, the blue jays
marauding, the gnarls and the crags, the land of the lost ?

by Gerard Malanga

He would’ve been the last one you’d expect to find out at Blackpool
on a sea breeze winter’s day or at East Parade long past.
You wouldn’t see him in his Sunday best,
his thirsting for the dark side of New York at memory’s loss
and now the stroll in Oxford Street Northwest
with cane in hand, with eyes hungering and lost.
His hearing lost.  Unknown at some unknown address.

by Gerard Malanga

She came from a place of no particular consequence
with a vision as wide as the bright blue skies
and lived by her wits, making ends meet,
as they say, in the oddest of places.  The dusty calle.
A rail hub gone blind in the middle of nowhere
to nowhere.  Brush scrub as far as the eyes could see
or the wind as a silent companion.
The loneliness of it all.
The grassy stretch of it all.
The numbers slowly ticking away.
The lack of tradition.  The dog days
of August . . . or was it grainy November ?

by Ilya Kaminsky

They say so much sky in her chest addicted her.
They claim, with inappropriate laughter, she requested

to be locked in a bird house, refusing to believe in silence,
Sonya Barabinski goes to the Opera with chickens in her pockets.

She bites a hole in an apple and in that hole
she pours a shot of vodka.

She drinks from the apple in turn, to our health !
— just before her death — Sonya

announces: I will become a government musician
whispering: Better one of them should

die than one of us —
              in the chill and iron heart of cobblestone street every
woman she meets

comes forth to kiss her face.
Every mother buried just east of town, an honest place

to drown, quiet homegrown bodies
lie down.  Under this earth, she is no less blessed.

Those still alive must raise their hands.
She sets off for the beach, on foot, a good mile

and a half of wind,
a vodka glass in her pockets, and when the bottle is empty

she drops her striped dress and walks, her mouth open, into the sea.
“Boatswain, I am your daughter !  I let this water

fill my lungs’ whisper: boatswain, I am your pregnant daughter.”