Garbage Man’s Song
The music lifted the sheet and the fingers
of the sun offered me scraps from the soul
of Sibelius. The question that follows is: Why
do you love your loneliness so much? I only
smiled toward the body, lost in the notes
beside me. Saliva and staves belong together.
And as the sounds choked, we sank
again into sleep. Outside the garbage truck
growls. Inside, the room is empty.
Paradise
I lost you somewhere in the storm
between the lightning bolts that
always missed hitting me.
The city is enormous. The rivers again
overflowed, but no baskets with babies
floated on them,
no talking snakes crawled in the gardens.
That’s nonsense to me. Now
you are the important one. Where did you go?
“The heart is a lonely hunter,”
the book I gave you is
already a pale memory. Paradise is not
Disneyland. Should I let
the stormy wind lead me?
It would only tell me to
keep the world under poetic
boot. I don’t want that. Seven trumpets
I need to show me
the right way. I’m looking for a sign.
In the darkness flashes the orthodox
electricity of the red sign.
To the Emergency room! To
the cardiologist’s office! But he
sent me back home, where
I found this still beating
heart in a jar of formaldehyde.
Poetess in New England
She wears the typewriter keys
around her neck like a necklace.
White sheets scattered across the floor,
carrying the scent of the coming winter.
In this remote place, even
the seasons slow their arrival.
Old lindens surround the yard,
like a guard of past memories.
Last night’s rain… The house is sunk
in mud, and woodpeckers telegraph
all the new forgotten news.
The cup of coffee steams in her hand.
Words no longer come, therefore
the white sheets. She hears the end, the end
gently whispers to her: Come and take me!
With bowed head she returns,
dressed in a violet-colored dress,
long since ceased to bloom.
About the Author
Peycho Kanev is the author of 12 poetry collections and three chapbooks, published in the USA and Europe. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, such as: Rattle, Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Front Porch Review, Hawaii Review, Barrow Street, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Adirondack Review, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others.
