eatpoetry

Writing the Impossible

Where was God, the Yahweh,
as we sat in my car, timid,
a Christian and Muslim, missing?

Was it goodness we felt
when my lip pierced your Heaven,
pouring out thick, Islamic lore?

At night, would I go to sleep,
Bible beside lamp — or would
Angels leaf though the Surahs?

And as my dreaming unclasped
would it be streets of gold—
or Houris, and rivers of milk?

But this is all I hold true:
your hot, July flesh: impossible;
ergo, I write the impossible:

Hallelujah. Subhan’Allah.
Emmanuel. Masha’Allah.

© 2009 Constantine Kulakov

Monsters of Beauty

Where’s your shame:
barging into dreams,
torturing with beauty?

© 2009 Constantine Kulakov

Ovid in the Third Reich

by Geoffrey Hill

non peccat, quaecumque potest peccasse negare,
solaque famosam culpa professa facit.
Amores, III, xiv

I love my work and my children. God
Is distant, difficult. Things happen.
Too near the ancient troughs of blood
Innocence is no earthly weapon.

I have learned one thing: not to look down
So much upon the damned. They, in their sphere,
Harmonize strangely with the divine
Love. I, in mine, celebrate the love-choir.

you were no blond bombshell

You were no blond bombshell,
no steamy, lace flashback—
who guards shrapnel as rare?

You were that immortal brooch,
a small, silver earth, breathing
for my moist palm’s approach.

I like you that way, glowing,
a memory — it carries me
through the anti-romantic decay.

Now, I’ll watch your fireworks blast.
Or laugh, forget, just hoarding
the metal veins of our past.

One day you’ll sit across me:
you the dentist, me the poet.
I’ll feel the brooch in my pocket.

© 2009 Constantine Kulakov