Read More: A brief Q&A with John Minczeski
This Could Be the Night
In the precincts of night, the light warps
and curves around the galaxies. Night,
the work is never done. If you’re not
prepping for next Monday’s rites of spring,
it’s for what comes after, like a grandchild,
or the thaw. Night, what shall we do with
the old world’s frayed and pitted streets,
cucumbers and the broken lances of tree limbs?
Night, why do you start so small
like a donkey cart straining along mountain passes?
A billion galaxies poke holes in you with their
gossip. Today, holding old jeans to the window,
light leaked through an embarrassment
in the crotch seam. You won’t
believe this, night, but the one time I got invited
as an adult to a high school prom the theme was
this could be the night—a year later,
the class president gave birth to twins.
Spongy night, sinister night, dangerous undertow
of slicked black hair and a motorcycle jacket.
Streetlights and the galaxies breach you.
Lions slept the first time Adam
stayed awake to name you.
Ghosts
Our clouds have drifted to Chicago and beyond, following
the interstate through Gary, South Bend, Toledo.
The air sticks to the roof of my mouth like a communion wafer.
Structure is destiny. In this darkened room I catch a glint
as if you’ve climbed the stair and eased yourself onto the sofa,
savoring the finish of your Cote-du-Rhone: black currant, leather.
The People United Shall Never Be Defeated runs in the background,
laying on the carpet like snow. This close to All Souls Day,
I’m keeping you and my other ghosts on speed dial.
There is so much to savor in the world: a scatter of leaves,
burst milkweed pods adding to the seed catalog of the wind.
And as you once said, Drink the good stuff. There is so much
to be grateful for: you spending a few minutes here, like sharing
a winning lotto ticket before shooting off into the cosmos;
your companionable silence. I know it’s the haunting hour,
brief shadow. What else could it be? The stair rail and Alvaro’s
yellow horse seem to float behind you.
The piano’s variable wind harvests me.
In the Overnight Dark I Eat a Banana
and we’ll continue
to consume each other
like expensive jewelry […]
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If a Rhino Charges
At scout camp once a kid, spotting a snake
swimming in the shallows, went berserk
and smashed it with an oar. Over and over.
His look of desperate ecstasy,
the snake broken and angular as a coat hanger.
His war, his exhausted triumph.
As a boy, a distant Polish cousin picked up
an unexploded leftover in a field.
On meeting him years later in Sokólka,
he shook hands with his left, proof
that no war is ever completely over. […]
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John Minczeski is the author of five previous collections and two chapbooks. Poems appear or are forthcoming in Cider Press Review, Louisville Review, Harvard Review The New Yorker, and Bear Review. He has taught in poets in the schools and in colleges around the Twin Cities. Minczeski holds an MFA in poetry from the Warren Wilson.
Read More: A brief Q&A with John Minczeski