Ilya Bolotowsky, In the Barber Shop, 1934, (Smithsonian American Art Museum)

Legacy

Primed, a film of cream brushed into lather,

supple to thumb and to a five-edged Schick,

he arches for no pro barber his neck

to tame the bristles: his brother

knows that from the cheekbone to the temple

the dark patch is not birthmark, not there before

self-inflicted blows became feature.

I slide it aside, and glide blade down the stubble.

Once he was our father’s spitting image,

papa who, younger then than I am now, stood

beside me when impatient for manhood

I raised to face a razor at sixteen. We’ve aged:

he’s now our mother’s father. Ghostly witnesses

coalesced, steam from the faucet rises.

 

Lego

To break so vast a Heart

Required a Blow as vast —

No Zephyr felled this Cedar straight —

’Twas undeserved Blast —

(Dickinson)

From a green plate, one square foot and studded,

brick on Duplo brick a high-rise scaled

to a blue penthouse floor snapped on red.

Fog hid the city. Our lurid tower

arced, a totem in relief: outside

across the bay the skyline loomed a blur.

Above the lapping sea, the turning tide,

below advancing clouds, hung my reverie:

a partnership of builder brother barons,

two grizzled would-be architects and masons.

Plastic to concrete: I willed an alchemy

beyond our smiles beside it for the selfie

before the climbing breakers first tossed breeze,

then a leveling gust through the balcony.

 

Legs

I walked along the Hudson River thinking

of autumn sundown, motion and stasis,

transport; across a mossy stream the cataract 

we waded to, through mist

your arm outstretched to torrent, I for safety,

as once on a squally beach, pulling you back.

I thought of Dante stuck in the ninth circle;

of the sunlit clubhouse pool,

you, fearless of pits and plunges,

buoyed by papa, splashing and laughing

to the deep. It seemed bottomless and

far. That was then, but I can see

your legs still driving you from my shallow end.

Finish the lap, brother, return to me

Also by this author
Published in the March 2020 issue: View Contents
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