by Thaddeus Rutkowski

I say I’m going to read in bed,
and she asks, “Can I read with you?”
“Sure,” I say, but before she gets there
I pull up a blanket to cover my body.
She easily climbs the ladder
and crawls over me.

“We could read The Lord of the Rings aloud,” I say,
remembering that, years before,
I read the book to her
but didn’t get past the first chapter,
about Bilbo’s birthday party,
where he puts on the Ring and vanishes.

I show her the book I’m reading, called Grendel,
and tell her it’s hard to read
She says she read it freshman year in high school.
“How were you able to do that?” I ask.
“It was different from the other books
we had to read,” she says.

I ask what book she’s reading.
I see flames on the front cover.
The title is How to Set a Fire,
and the book is about a teenage arson club.
“It’s young adult but sold in the adult section,” she says.

“I’m going to sleep,” I say,
and she starts to crawl over me
in the opposite direction.
I move over so she can get past more easily.

by Thaddeus Rutkowski

“Are you in a hurry?” a young Hasidic man asks
as I wait on my bicycle at an intersection
in South Williamsburg.
“Why?”  I ask.
“I want you to close a freezer door,” he says.
“It’s ringing and won’t stop.”
“Why can’t you shut it off ?”
“It’s the Sabbath.”

I follow him around the corner
to his apartment building.
“You know,” I say, “if I were you,
I’d just close the freezer door.  No one will see.”
“God will see.”
I take the elevator while he takes the stairs.

I walk into his apartment, past three children
playing a game on the floor in a clean, bare room.
The freezer door is open an inch; I push it shut.
“Do you want any food?” he asks.  “Any water?”
“No thanks,” I say.  “I have water.”
I walk out, get on my bike and ride toward the bridge.

by Thaddeus Rutkowski

I’m asked if the fillings in my teeth
were done in a different country.
I wonder if foreign fillings look different,
if they are higher or lower on the tooth,
or have a different color.
Maybe what looks different is my face,
as if I’m from a different country
and had my earlier dental work done there.

“What country do you mean?”
I ask the dentist and his assistant
because I can’t quite figure out
what country they think I’m from.
Maybe they don’t know;
maybe all they know is,
I don’t look like they do.
I wait for their answer with my mouth open.

by Ann Marie Wranovix

It’s easy not to see
what happens in private
to bodies.  Take the flesh
out of the picture
and there’s no gasp or cringe
or tear.  We’ve made it safe,
this space.  The words are pure
now, blackboarded away
from voice, untimely, ripped
forth and borne unblooded
in the thin range of the air.

Though clouds of witness mark
our every meeting,
we travel blinded,
untempted now to touch
what is forbidden,
nor urged to offer
comfort or receive it.
The mortal riddles
drop through ghostly platforms
and hang there unremarked.

But we who face it
for untutored eyes
in front row seats may see
reflected back a gift:
in the forgotten fly,
the coffee dribbled
on the bosom, the lost
line from the loved sonnet,
the stumble at the board,
in droop and drop and grope
the embodied grace
of dissolution,

exposing to the gaze
our secret renditions,
as we at last begin
to give it all up.