Leo Yankevich

out of the mire, up to the skies.And so it is on a strange planetorbiting a distant star.The paradigmatic two eyescrawl out of the indifferent water,the wide lungs of a dinosaur,the father, mother, son and daughterof the first mammal in his jaws.A billion years will likely passbefore they walk on their two feet,a billion more…

Where the dark water wetsthe breaking dawn, we etchwith sleepy mortal eyes.Voracious cormorantsscud, dive, and swiftly risefrom murky whirlpool currents,unwary silver breaminside their crooked bills.We sail as in a dreamwhile blood drips from their gills,our calloused dirty fingers,as always, mocked and scornedby clouds, an ache that lingers,the pain of prey unmourned.We watch enskyments, faceslooking heavenwards.Never…

He lies beneath a stonethat weighs more than a ton,his skull and skeletonlike ruins left alonefor twenty hundred springs,the ruins of a templein which a once great peopleno longer prays or sings,their destinies and willsvanished with each god,their pantheon forgotwhen lowered with the hills.

They will not tell of what he lost and gave,nor how he lived and was beloved by allback in the little town from which he came,nor how, inside a foxhole all alone,he curled up like a fetus in the wombwhen the sniper’s bullet called his nameand, like a judgment to be writ in stone,found him…

the valley of my ears, they follow wordswhispered in dreams. And only for this doI keep faith in the alchemy of rays.They will return when ice breaks in the river,when my mind sinks in the mud of May’stadpole-like embryo, flock to delivertheir paeans over my salt and pepper hairas I rise from the shadow of…

a slice of ham,potato rinds,a glob of jam,beer bottle caps.Inside this drumthere’s other stuff:a blouse that’s torn,a hiker’s thumb,two clips of porn,hardcore and snuff.

to know why it is done to you.”—Ezra PoundYou hear your lungs begin to rattle.This is the rattle mother toldyou about: it comes before your deathas vital organs fail.It is the end of agonizingsuffocation, when life putsa pillow on your nose and mouth.All death is suffocation.Indifferent light penetratesthe jello in your bedside bowl,and hell absorbs…

back to Israel, to reloadnew bombs sent from America.Blinding smoke burns in her eyesand shrouds the limbs of terrorists,boys and girls from grammar schoolwho in the spring first learned to count.

a hint or threat of rain.Beyond the tracks a lane,a bench along the way.Night watchmen, empty tinsof bargain lager, starsin smoke, East German carswith soot on their tail fins.A little further on—unheard of graves, hedgerows,and flocks of hooded crowsdelighting in the dawn.

an actress, doctor, and philanthropist—the stories of their lives take up a page.But I recall my neighbour, Betty Amos,who, with beads wrapped round a gnarled fist,attempted to cure cancer with Hail Marys,never letting faith succumb to rage.There is no mention of her name at all,no words relating kindnesses and deeds,how she brought us apples in…