Poetry

 

 

Evan Eisman

Last Poem (II)

When I drove A. home after

his stroke, he couldn't hold it in

for the short drive to his apartment.

That's the origin of the stain

on the passenger seat of my car.

I hadn't noticed he'd gone

until, without saying goodbye,

he shut the door.

We lose control. Things go unsaid.

That's how things are.

 

Protractor

I feel there is no end toward which my speech could point

And yet I protract myself

Into a future in which I curse and praise

The zero against which I measure myself.

 

The Mirror Portrait

About Medusa. No one sees her. She doesn't see herself. We know she's there by the blank
stares everywhere she's been. In the interstices of the poem, in
the caesurae, between the found lines, a portrait.

September. October. Immobile,

she is motive. Inert, she nevertheless acts.

Do not seek in the dust for a noble past,

for a handful, as much as a glance at her,

would petrify anyone. The air around her is corrupt.

As if she were the ghost of King Hamlet

started like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons,

she was about to speak

when she heard the rooster's crow,

and before she could see herself she was gone.

 

 

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