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Mike Ravdonikas: Poems
Have you tried sitting on it? / I was trying to finish a poem. The poem was trying to finish me. We both reached the end of language – where he begins and I stop – and stood breathing, eyeing one another with contempt. Him refusing to become whole, me…
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Have you tried sitting on it?
Live at Bocasu
Live at Bocasu
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Post /
An unfinished letter to my Grandma—
she would never listen to my stories,
feeding me her perfect barley porridge
with meat, picking bone after bone
with Grandad, or recalling basketball
days in post-war Leningrad, her
handsome coach who died, that captain,
fleet or army, who dared resist
the charms of her blonde braids and how
she married “just to spite him,” or that day
in Yalta when she had a chance to be
unfaithful and should have taken it, and
so I took to writing for a hope to get a word in—
sat on my desk too long, too long,
before it joined her bundle labeled
‘dear Misha’s letters and cards with
foreign city views’ (my uncle sent them back).
An unfinished letter to my Grandma—
she would never listen to my stories,
feeding me her perfect barley porridge
with meat, picking bone after bone
with Grandad, or recalling basketball
days in post-war Leningrad, her
handsome coach who died, that captain,
fleet or army, who dared resist
the charms of her blonde braids and how
she married “just to spite him,” or that day
in Yalta when she had a chance to be
unfaithful and should have taken it, and
so I took to writing for a hope to get a word in—
sat on my desk too long, too long,
before it joined her bundle labeled
‘dear Misha’s letters and cards with
foreign city views’ (my uncle sent them back).
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(I’m not reading your poem if it includes the word “apostatize”. Or any other such Greek nonsense you and everyone else could do without.)
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