| "Cardinal Points" litetrary journal: www.stosvet.net |
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Lothar Quinkenstein Gathering |
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The Feather Over roof ridges and eaves, it floats down into your yard. One sense instantly perceives, and you're already on guard. See it sinking, see it rising, circling, gliding here and yon. Almost seems to tell you something, almost seems to be a sign. Crooked cracks a window score, and the plaster has a boil, for the flat on the last floor has been empty for a while. Further downward stunted flowers wilt and bend on tired stocks, of bread and cake crumbs daily showers fall from a checkered table cloth. Nails and hooks and cable strands dangle black and tapewormlong, and an odd system of rods also mixes in the throng. There, a lidded pot contains someone's lunch, set out to chill. Next to it, a sack of grains flutters loosely, without fill. Patient, pliable, a wire that's been here as long as rocks, now hangs smugly, out for hire, sometimes with a pair of socks. First-floor curtains in a kitchen, stained in gray by Sunday's meal, and the lovey-dovey pigeons peppering the window sill. Tell me if I understand you, read your sign beyond a doubt: Do you write upon the air what I see day in, day out? Or was this silent upward flight fancied too boldly and too loft? Is your message so entwined as to lead me fully off? Feather, feather, ever agile, gone's, alas, the happy swish — you're now swimming in a puddle over by the kitty dish. Before Easter If I ever had an inspiration, I had one then. (Johnny Cash) Belambed after days at the desk you go out nothing is finished the light evinces as always. A first thread of green embroiders the park you stand under the trees the swan displays how it's done: dunk the beak in the reflection get full that way. You bed the water the swan on the palm of your hand support them on bones and railing the horses at the fence nod in encouragement: only look closer a beetle scuttles on the plaster toe Aeternitas now keep a straight face or else everything goes to the dogs. Wiepersdorf, the day before departure, March 2007 gathering star on gallows in entryway debates about mother's milk your paper yearning your helpless errand to the yard of rabbi Akiba Eger in the evening before it people and almost a dozen flames passed from wick to wick fluttering blooms glances past shouldered bags with bathing things Poznan, April Smigiel, All Saints' Day or how two men, who were shoveling rubble onto a trailer, showed us the way to the old cemetery or how the sun trickled through the clouds when we found the next event in the series Lyrical Autumn announced on the weathered church door or how the plastic bag rustled caught in the elder branches or how yellow and gleaming the maple leaves lay in the grass and on the gravestone shards or how we explained to each other why the moss only grows in the letters while the surface remains blank or how we felt the moss with our fingers because we couldn't read the writing or and thus I will flee their courts and grow a long beard of gray hairs or Przyjecie Zydów do Polski or Put up here for the night! or my mother came from Lithuania, my father came from Poland or I most enjoyed the poetry of Mickiewicz or vos veln mir makhen ven meshiakh vert kumen? or there has to be someone in the world who is as old as the world or Yossel, fils de Yossel Rakover de Tarnopol, parle а Dieu or how our feet got wet from the first snow on the withered grass how we sat down by the window in the cafe looked at the dawning market square warmed our hands on our cups after the visit to the old cemetery in Smigiel. Rusalka, december fishermen on snow-covered ice a lull in the air majuscules at the end of lines left by footprints drop their artificial perpendiculars growing sound in the midst of rejected semicolons breathes moans from the deep announces a phenomenal catch gurgled sighed out under the axes the buckets the haul has whispered itself away to the shore into the reeds take clouds and shrubbery into your own hands roll yourself a winter word to light on harsh roads your way home afternoon with friends a boy sees in the mirror a girl looks out the window nibbles on the edge of a glass the other boy snaps the second girl while reading she looks up from the pages her breath spins a pattern of smoke |