CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ
I show up
without appointment,
"Take walk-ins?"
If you can wait 15 minutes
Anna will take you
a young man says
nodding over
to a blonde woman
working the pink skull
of an elderly man.
I settle into hard vinyl
torn seat skin
oozing cushion pus,
and watch Anna
as she carefully separates
stringy white wisps
with a comb
on the old man’s scalp
snips at strands
as if frightened to make
an irretrievable mistake.
She takes a step back
to inspect,
consider next moves,
snippets of conversation
pierce our distance
I try to place
her familiar
immigrant accent.
She stares into the mirror,
her doppelgänger
pauses for ID,
then looks down
at the man draped
like a morgue corpse
face exposed
he isn`t talking;
she spins
as if to confront
an approaching stranger
(could she feel my rude
inquisitive stare?)
switches scissors
for a buzzing razor
and with a click
begins a circle dance
hora of sadness
round a chair
bolted to the floor.
“I am from small town
near Kiev," she says,
"no one left.”
noone left
my ear is caught,
but you did Anna
you left
peripatetic
palindromic
Anna
and before you
my grandmother left
from the czar's pogroms
to Putin's war
and here we are today
I am next in line
waiting my turn
far from Kiev
and not so far.
2 comments:
You've added audio! -- I am cheering! It's great. Reminds me that the origin of our relationship (such as it is) was hearing you recite your poems at a zoom event for Jewish Ottawa poets, which motivated me to reach out to you (which is not something I normally do). You've got a talent for writing, but at least an equal talent for reading. This poem, "Far From Kiev," is certainly a keeper. A lovely "day in the life" mini-narrative culminating in a small epiphany ... it's a style/technique that you often use, but this one is particularly good. I can see the barber shop. I can see Anna. You've painted the scene very well. No wasted words. The technique is exquisite.
Here are a few of my favorite lines ...
I settle into hard vinyl
torn seat skin
oozing cushion pus
as she carefully separates
stringy white wisps
with a comb
snips at strands
[which is then brilliantly echoed with ...]
snippets of conversation
hora of sadness
round a chair
bolted to the floor.
Those are just the lines that stand out, but really it's a terrific poem from beginning to end. The connection between your grandmother escaping from pogroms and Anna escaping from Putin's war is poignant and timely.
Congratulations, Glen, you've really achieved something special with this one!
And I hope that you will continue with the audio component going forward.
Kelp, I blush. Thank you my friend, for the kind words. Part of the reason I finally figured out how I can add audio to the blog (Blogger does not make it easy) was because I love the reading you do of your poems on your website. It adds so much to the experience of the poem to hear the author read. And also, there was the experience I had with Celan's Todesfugue. When I heard Celan's reading of it (on Youtube), new dimensions of meaning were added. Poetry on the page is almost like reading a sheet musical notation.
A word about this poem. It is certainly a slice of life, fashioned from real life experience. Implicit in the approach is that there is no such thing as an ordinary experience. Every moment is extraordinary. Only, we take too much for granted, we ignore and desensitize ourselves. Even the seemingly most quotidian and tedious experiences contain a rich storehouse of meanings, if we are open to them. If art has any purpose, it's to reveal the extraordinary aspect of the seemingly ordinary.
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