Poetry Suite by Jeremy Radin
“The absence, eaten by packs of stars.”
Poetry by Jeremy Radin
These poems are excerpt from a larger work, a collection of poems called, Dear Sal, inspired by the play Talley’s Folly by Lanford Wilson.
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from Dear Sal
The old men of the delicatessen
speak of playing chess against
the angels, of clothing & feathers
piled beside the bed. They raise
wooden canes toward fluorescents,
pronounce a dark & humid question
for which I have no answer. I laugh –
a bludgeoned music, say the river
remembers better than I. My beard,
still, belying nothing. I do not speak
your unchosen name, the infinite
space it unravels in my mouth.
In the dead of winter I wander through
the streets, costumed in the clothing
of a bridegroom. I tighten my tie past
the threshold of mercy & burst apart
into the snow.
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from Dear Sal
More about the pigeons: I know very little.
Of this, they constantly remind me.
You they say know very little.
It’s not that we have conversations, you see,
or that I’m going mad after all these years.
It’s just that when my father’s body was hauled
out of that room, they were all
I noticed. Strange
that it is night, I thought, & the sky is full
of pigeons. I cannot prove anything
but you must know this is true. You must
have heard them shudder,
seen the specks of light between the gaps
in their feathers. All the pigeons
of all the world that by day disperse
into parks & make their dirty circles
over the heads
of opera singers; by night they gather
in the sky, spread their wings
to make the dark. How terrifically
humbling to know
so little.
Last night I dreamt of you
slipping
from a shadow
like the Earth
slipping
from her gown of pigeons
& I could not get off the floor
for the weight
of all that I do not know.
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from Dear Sal
Now the river tells what it saw:
White smoke. Oysters in the trash. Pearls ground in a machine. Axes hung
from a windmill. The weaponization of the sycamore. This country. & then
the wonder. The softness of great distance from war. The very opposite
of the world. A woman becomes a man becomes a woman becomes
the evening in question - a magnificent festival of noiseless wings.
Now the owls:
O yes That How remarkable what you do with each other
Your terrible bodies becoming
suddenly incapable of what they continue
to do to our bodies To the one body O G-d
when they made the sound
of their true bodies we could not
help ourselves The silent nation of us
rushing toward those countless
twinkling mice knowing this time
we would take them in our claws
Now the stars:
Do you think you can understand this?
A birth!
We moved toward each other.
We made ready for the welcome.
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from Dear Sal
With the window
open I stand
licking the wind
sending a fleet
of phantom tongues
to roost between
your legs
You dream you are
in ancient Rome
drowning in a vault
of Nero’s roses
Petals foam
from the corners
of your mouth
The room lit
by scarlet arcs
There is nothing
to be
afraid of, Sal
Place your hand
on the miracle
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from Dear Sal
I am coming, Sal.
In a beat-up Plymouth, powered by stars.
Down a road of stars through trees of stars.
Every button of my brand new suit is a star.
My cufflinks, stars, I wear a star in my lapel.
I washed my hair with a handful of stars.
The sky shaken loose, I lathered my beard.
I’m coming to you with a bouquet of stars.
With a blanket of stars & a basket of stars.
With a bottle of stars & a banquet of stars.
For years I have pulled stars from my body:
Here is the joy, here is the grief, here is
the slaughter I have shaped into stars.
I have polished the stars & buried them.
Stars of my nipples, stars of my knees,
stars of my vertebrae, stars of my lungs.
An orchard has grown, it is heavy & yours.
I will gather the fruit & transport it to you.
See how it falls from my pockets & armpits.
My bones are stars & the stars are for you.
My wound is a star & my wound is for you.
We’ll hold these stars to each other’s lips.
& drink the ghosts from each other’s stars.
I am coming to you with a wedding of stars,
a meadow of stars & a chuppah of stars,
a book of stars with our song written in it.
If the hush returns with its claws unbroken
we’ll be there Sal, with stars in our knuckles,
stars in our hammer, stars in our singing.
A volley of stars will pummel this country.
The absence, eaten by packs of stars.
A voice will speak in the voice of a star.
A voice will speak & the river will stand.
The river will stand & I love you Sally.
I love you Sally & the river will carve
our names into the dark.
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Header image courtesy of Vanessa Moselle. To view her photo essay, "These Human Shells," go here.
Jeremy Radin is a poet and actor living in Los Angeles. His poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in numerous journals including Pen Center’s The Rattling Wall, Union Station, NAILED, and Freezeray and his first book, Slow Dance with Sasquatch, is available from Write Bloody Publishing. You may have seen him on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia or in a restaurant aggressively eating pancakes by himself. Follow him @germyradin.