Saturday, minutes before 10am on my way back from moving laundry to the dryer marijuana awakens me to my surroundings before I turn the corner where an older gentleman wearing tinted sunglasses even though it’s overcast is fast finishing the remains of a joint while numerous passengers exit the 65 bus and I double-take wondering what kind of kid he used to be & what kind still dwells within […]
You can’t take it with you, my mother says Who I am was almost lost overseas in atrocity I claim no understanding of Many leave home for the next generation There are heirloom tomatoes for all with no worldly possessions to pass down Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in Right Hand Pointing, Shot Glass Journal, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere. Mark is originally from the Philadelphia area, but currently […]
I wish I had learned more español From this crack-spined text, book-ended on my Desk beside other language guides, color of El infierno de crepúsculo: the burning sky at dusk, so I Could read the great poemas españoles de Dulce María Loynaz, liberator’s daughter, writer of Anthems, hymnos. But really I wish I had learned the most beautiful Palabras from my wife’s tongue so I Could live two lives […]
Astronauts are our young who gazed up, saw Three sons burning Inside the lunar module that never Lifted from the pad, their atmosphere ignited By a stripped silver wire–who saw These nylon suited men imagining what it would be to fly When fire flashed their mission to core Components: breath, and a demand To feel everything, a rising cabin temperature With skyward view–who saw And decided: to lose […]
Daughter. (I heard your first words in your mother’s) downcast Silence, womb-wrapped in shawl on couch pillows, her Face glowing with a muted film’s pale hues: worried Jaw set against the unwatched screen, not looking Me directly in the eye, questions and answers dis- Connected in some essential way between us; even Reaching for the quiet flesh near the womb, reaching for You, we are far away from touch, you […]
We rarely sit with ourselves, and see the struggle within us all Stop letting the concrete jungle tuck you in at night lower one leg at a time and remember that pain is also your connection to the living His shirt blew behind him a flag in the wind, his desired last stand His hands spread inches from the rain and the window washer’s rope that hangs above the 24th […]
The road was a river, or could have been the way the rain danced over pot-holed tar and glittered under indifferent street lamps. I sat beneath naked trees, jack-knifed limbs sighing in the night. I waited for love, lust or drugs. A stranger in a tweed suit, a dog without an owner, a miracle or a spaceship. Charles Dutka is a poet and writer who lives and works in […]
Each year East Beach holds a sand castle competition. We wait for people to leave before we set out to explore the massive display and pick one to mimic. Today is the day. We pause and stare at each exhibit as if at the Louvre. You finally say you like the dragon best. I stop in front of it and set your favorite yellow pail and shovel at my feet. […]
bored out of my mind / so I come back to you / I always come back to you / I come back to you when I’m drunk / I come back to you when I’m not / though I’m not sure why / perhaps it’s your wicked smile / your wicked point of view / your Frank Sinatra charm / though he was a bastard too / according to […]
i am everybody’s favorite hiding place, everyone’s bedroom closet and under-the-staircases where they wrote letters as a kid and packed a suitcase to run away with, the nooks and crannies they breathed deeply in, escaped family dinners in, hurt themselves in, i am a thousand empty spaces of wood, cement, aluminum, flesh and bone, yet i don’t seem to be animated yet, a real person yet. i am a thousand […]
Melancholy Hyperbole 