Exactly What Happened
We stepped in the obvious sunlight
past the florist and a silver van
full of tulips and little daisies
potted in plastic.
I thought we should remember
the flowers, sunlight and spray paint
love notes scrawled on brick,
but she had a plane to catch.
Tell me a funny story,
she begged me at the maw
of metro escalators.
I said this one and held
my hand up as she slid
like a ghost down gliding stairs.
And I thought of Desolation
Angels, when a girl
calls Kerouac from her fire escape,
thinking he's somebody else,
but anyway invites him up
for hot chocolate;
how that never happens.
Then I actually went to McDonald's
for coffee and stood in the obvious
sunlight, lips pursed,
blowing into a paper cup
of brown hot water,
wondering how to fill the day
and where everyone kept going.
Reading the Polish Poets
January. Darkness. Prague
is a locked gate.
Word fires burn nearer.
History, the moon
a raw wound,
gazes.
Fathers, help me
sing
the orphan music.
Trying to Write a Poem Beneath the Statute of Saint Vaclav
Rain slid from holy face to horse's hoof
On streambeds oxidized by eighty–six relentless years.
I crouched beneath the statue, out of wind.
Looking up, I couldn't help but see the horse's bulge
And balls and recall Nabokov's advice:
"Caress the details."
Praha
City where soviet tanks
turn pink & sprout fountains,
City of snowy fingertips
& fists of rain,
Whose river is a woman,
City of sisters silk and silver,
thighs and velvet cheekbones,
City of a man in fray–cuffed khakis
kicking wishes from a wilted dandelion,
City of din, city of breath,
a brick on my tongue.
Ekleksographia:
Wave Two
March, 2010
Poetry
Stephan Delbos
Stephan Delbos is a New England-born poet living in Prague, where he teaches at Charles University and edits several literary publications, including the Rakish Angel Poetry Pamphlet Series. His poetry and essays have been published most recently or are forthcoming in New Letters, Atlanta Review, Zoland Poetry, Rain Taxi and Poetry Salzburg Review.