Nameless, and: The Reading
Rent from DeepDyve- Nameless, and: The Reading
Nameless
Every family has them.Photos of people nobody knows,distant relatives, perhaps,friends of parents long dead.
A young man poses under the clockin Prague's medieval square,shirt open at the neck.Why the mocking grin?Wind ruffles his hair.
Saucy in a filmy blousea woman bends towardher photographerover emptied coffee cups.Breasts perky as young trout.Sun, shadows, an outdoor café.
A family strolls in Karlovy Vary.Solemn, dark-suited father.Elegant mother with hat and lace gloves.She holds a child by the hand,its head encased in bandages.
Snapshots, nothing remarkable,but my wife dislikes seeing such photosframed in shops for sale to strangers.
Last night as dusk settled in, she carriedours in a box to the back gardenand burned them one by one,in a kind of funeral.Inside, she lit a Yahrzeit candle. [End Page 123]
The Reading
Adam Zagajewski in Chicago
He was ill at ease at first."Can you hear me? This microphone—"the o's spoken like the French u, with pursed lips."Is it better now?"In a voice that rose and fell, half lyric, half ironic,came poems of a summer dawn streakedwith odors of mint and dark earth,of swift rivers hesitantly crossed,crippled towns, refugees dressed for every seasondragging carts behind them.And poems studded with abstractionswe teach our students to avoid,purity, justice, liberty. [End Page 124]
Mark Perlberg has completed work on his fourth book of poems. His most recent book, The Impossible Toystore, is available from Louisiana State University Press.
