Eyewear is thrilled to be offering a clutch of poems by an emerging poet of some note.
Adam Wiedewitsch (pictured) is
a founding editor of Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art and
poetry editor at The
Prague Revue. In 2009, he co-founded the international
association of writers and artists,The Pirogue Collective,
and co-edited the anthology Imagine
Africa and The Rule of
Barbarism, poems by Abdellatif Laâbi.
He has received fellowships
from the Gorée Institute (Senegal), the Eva Tas Foundation (Holland), DAAD
(Berlin), The Millay Colony (New York), The Ledig House International Writers
Residency (New York) and his poetry has been published or is forthcoming
from Carapace (South
Africa), New Contrast (South
Africa), Salamander (USA) and Azul Press (Holland).
Nature Morte
In
memory of Seamus Heaney
Offal held at bay by a boar’s rugged hide
cannot keep the monkeys, cats, and dogs
from picking up the market-fresh scent
of death. Neither can the paintbrush.
In even the most morbid nature morte
their razor sharp eyes size up the haul in the pitch
beneath the fishmonger’s slab like wolves
forest-black, troops of paws and fangs pinch guts
and grapes the minute the butcher looks away.
But they alone do not grant the old Dutch
larders and market stalls such ravenous life.
The wild forms of what once were, are,
simply for having been athletic hares
and speckled fawns, catfish and king salmon
before the hook, the last dance upstream.
***
Commentary On / “Commentary LXIII (van gogh)”
after the poem by Juan Gelman
What with his sea-
changes / catching up with
the Dutch preacher
rumored to pace
the Belgian slag / or
the absinthe dragon
at Arles / or any other Zola-
born thrust / burned hot
and out / is
a bit like
wrangling a ghost / yet
without a stroke
of pretense / that tendency
to think we know
we know / an / other’s
furious worn-out
shuffle / and on a day
when prisons
exiled your mind / you knelt
without two-shits for
self / in his lavender fields /
Las Pampas / if not
for all this Provence /
***
Communion
Freedom Tower
She looks spent but
there’s no doubt
it’s me cast over her
knees
on the edge
of the subway seat
and by she I mean we
are crippled by cell-phone
screens
the off-chance someone
might blow us up
or like school kids
we wish to rescind a
text
wish we hadn’t read
what we just read
but cannot for the
life
of us stop: America, the
tower
flaccid from the Q
train bridge
by the gold-
leafed East River
is girder-by-girder
our master these days
and don’t ask me why
don’t ask me why she
sat up
straight as a shot
when we climbed out
the tunnel,
ask me why or why not
another tower
when nothing will ever
do.
***
If Night You Were a City
I’d
return in a jacket
of
gold leaves
drawn
tight
against
a city-wind
whipping
around corners
and
through the button-holes over
cobbled
streets
park
lanes
cordoned
off
barbarian
herds
of
steel and glass and concrete, ground zero
for
the crowds
of
absence. We’d lift off
beyond
the brick
toward
choked-stars, moons
out-shined
by neon signs
and
by anxious day moons
perched
on dark spires
gold
lions
we
wrap our naïve wings around
to
embrace the artifice
of
it all
and
the reality: the heat here
is
unbearable
and
I miss the need to be warm
the
need to look forward to
nights
alone with you
with
no morning on our minds
no
time
no
need to claw through
restaurants
packed with bridge
and
tunnel drunk
on
the filth
and
the beauty.
For
here
there
is no comparison to
autumn
as autumn
no
snow to justify
a
hot drink or a fat meal
the
fish is delicious yes
and
the beer
even
better but it’s not the same.
Some
say the grass is greener
as
if it’s God
and
more
that
I try to recreate
New
York each time a baobab
drops
a beetle
to
flee every time
winter
floods the sand
to
mute the night-
boats
eclipsing the mainland sprawl
trading
with another language
transformed
before my ears:
tell me how you lived
your dream and I will tell you
who you are.
Every
night I mean every single night
and
with a wingspan
I
resurrect in a cool sweat
and
off in the distance
there
are drums drums
beating
the island like drums
and
right outside my window
an
unexpected laugh
in
concert
with
the percussive horn
of
the ferry
to
you.
There’s
nothing romantic about this
absolutely
nothing
absolute
I
am reminded of
everything
that went wrong
and
of everything that went right
but
when I wake if I wake
may
the flash not wax
our
feathers
may
it not melt our wings
ALL POEMS COPYRIGHT THE AUTHOR 2014
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