Sample Poems by John Surowiecki
Barney Attended by Dr. Cohen [after Goya]
At the outpost of life, Barney is no more
than a breath and it seems that the good doctor
and Death are the same, but it turns out
they only look alike.
The paregoric will cure my father after all;
the goblins lurking behind him are actually
the people who love him most.
This is a portrait of trepidation, not exiting.
Barney won’t be eaten in a bone-
cracking gulp; he’ll be nibbled at
by the leeches and eels of time.
Life will seep out of him and when it does
he’ll be wearing white silk pajamas,
his hands folded in rapt surrender.
Two Old Women by the Sea
Gienka remembers a gray day
in January when she and Barney
went walking along the beach,
deserted except for them and two
old women who wore lacy black hats
and stood on birdlike legs.
Barney showed them conches
filled with living ice, greenish and aspic-
speckled. Gienka gave them bleached
scallop shells and pieces of broken glass
the sea had burnished into green jade
and rubies the color of old blood.
The women shoed their initials in the sand
and giggled like girls when the Sound erased
what they had written. They were quick to sidestep
the spreading fans of waves, barking at each other
and engaging in irritated tangos
that ended inches from where they began.
Bolivia Street
It’s the last of the nation streets. After it
are the tree streets and then the president streets.
When it gets paved, shoes and lungs
get brushed with tar and the low-hanging
leaves of maple and oak get cooked.
Barney says there’s nothing there anymore:
no candy store, no theater, no bakery,
no tailor shop displaying a boy’s hound’s-
tooth jacket with leather shank buttons.
The metal shop is a graveyard of parts.
The war plaque has no room for new names.
And since the bees have disappeared
the azaleas suffer and the thyme is winter-quiet.
Each house wears the face of someone old
and failing and shadows of airplanes dart
from roof to roof like angels of death.
Garden and House
By June, Gienka’s black tulips
have already come and gone:
time now for irises
and the first inkling of roses.
She plants her tomatoes
on the sunny side of a half-dead oak
and will eventually tie them to bamboo stakes
with cut-up nylon stockings.
On the Fourth, tiger lilies
will appear: flags of another color.
•
Our house isn’t much to look at:
gray, ant-infested, peeling.
Inside, wallpaper is brown-
edged and lace curtains burn up
in the light they capture.
Above the parlor sofa
the Redeemer, rosy-cheeked
and smiling, exposes a heart
that Barney once said couldn’t
pump blood on a bet.