March 23-29, 2020: Poetry from Richard-Yves Sitoski and Michael Minassian

If I Could Sing Like Roy Orbison
You’d Always Feel Alone

which is my way of saying I love you still
if you haven’t figured that out, because

I have trouble writing of love except
when the word refers to cheese or to sleep.

You’d think the French had it figured out
but they got it backwards. If I say je t’aime

I’m saying ‘I love you’. But if I say je t’aime bien
I’m not saying ‘I love you lots’ but only

‘I like you’, the intensifier softening the blow
instead of being the brass knuckle.

That’s not the only thing I know of love
or of French. In French you don’t say ‘I miss you’

but tu me manques, which means ‘You’re missing
from me’. As in, there’s a gash in me where

a vital organ was ripped out. As in, seeing you
in the living room, engrossed in your book

while I reminisce, I feel a pain in my side
that daisies feel when you pull their petals off.

Craters on the Moon

The poet sits at his desk,
his glass eye floating
in a tea cup—
the empty socket
on the right side of his face
resembles photos
of craters on the moon.

No matter where you move,
the glass eye follows
like the mise en scene
in a Hitchcock film.

The poet keeps his good eye
fixed on the paper,
his pen moving
like a hidden gesture
in the odor of time.

His empty socket
playing images
from a movie
only he can see—
lonely as an empty drum.


Staying Put

I’ve stored the memory
of you in a jar

sealed the lid with wax
and kept it on a shelf
in the basement
for twenty years.

You once told me
that you left because
I wouldn’t stay in one place.

What else were you wrong about?