by Craig Cotter

Dear Alex,

Last night

you were 19.

*

Last night

your wife answered the phone

so no way to reach you—

*

Now we’re away
30 years .

Why do I bring you back

with your fresh skin?

Even your zits
on high cheekbones

teen oil around them

Wednesday
to take another chunk.

Tumors in my brain and chest

work to take me
some place new.

by Daisy Zamora

For Sandy Taylor

I

I watch the liveliness
in the packed dining room:
everyone is talking, laughing, ordering
exquisite meals and desserts
presented as if wild gardenias, heliotropes,
and carnivorous orchids on silver trays.

The waiters take away plates
piled with leftovers, desserts
barely touched by spoons
briefly tasted then cast aside.
That seems to be natural here.

I drink beer
at my solitary table,
devour fresh oysters from New Jersey
and don’t get it.

II

Four elderly women share a table
and toast each other with faded voices
lifting their trembling glasses.

After the third round of martinis
they are four joking, chattering girls
liberated from their corpses.

III

In Philadelphia is Old Bookbinder’s
and in Old Bookbinder’s am I ,
contemplating
the waste.

—Translated by George Evans

by Daisy Zamora

From each one life draws a face.

I’m not talking about cheekbones,
perfect noses, eyebrows, eyes,
wrinkled foreheads
sagging cheeks or
eyelids
but of what is impossible to hide
or fix with surgery or make-up.

I’m talking about the misery and horror
meanness and joy,
the cruelty or compassion
we see, without warning,
on someone else’s face
surprisingly our own.

—Translated by George Evans

by Daisy Zamora

More than eighty years
Mary Elizabeth O’Brien
waited to be free, as she once was
for a brief moment of her life,
after her orphaned childhood
and before marrying
the one who would be her husband
for more than five decades.

(She gave him:
three boys, two girls
and stillborn
twins).

She withstood:
shouts
insults
rudeness
kicks
and punches)

When she finally became a widow,
her astonished family couldn’t recognize her.
Like a bird preparing its nest in spring,
she changed rugs and curtains,
bought furniture,
painted the house and beautified the garden.

No one—only she—remembers
who Mary Elizabeth O’Brien was,
a girl forgotten by everyone,
who has returned, briefly,
for a while before her own death.

—Translated by George Evans