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Norbert Hirschhorn

The June Editor's Pick Poet is

Norbert Hirschhorn

Please feel free to email Norbert at: bertzpoet@yahoo.com

Norbert Hirschhorn

ST. MARK’S SQUARE, 1937
(penciled on the back)

black shawl, oval face, black eyes
emerging from misted colonnades
exact black image of my mother 

I found the photo in a
Venice flea market, a twin

never revealed, an affair
never told, or
an avatar, smoldering

HONEYMOON, SUNDA KALAPA SEAPORT, JAKARTA

She thinks
sunsets, ripples, 
luff of sails.

I think
rats, roaches, 
drunks overboard. 

She thinks
men with gold teeth, 
hairless chests.

I think
sharks, rotgut, 
rancid breath, whores. 
  
We think
divorce.

DANCE OF THE COCKCHAFERS

On pleasant evenings, early summer,
bombinations issue from the woods,
assaulting ears with unrelieved clamor
as maybug young emerge from pupahood
into annual rites: novitiates impaled
on pine needles staked into the ground.
Poor things, their wings in tremolo (that sound),
and while some fall off and limp away

most are sacrificed. One brave survivor
implores the veteran maybugs standing by:
“Why? The best of brood left half alive, or
yet the weaker ones so cruelly made to die,
an abomination! Why do it?”
“Because—like you now—we’ve all been through it.”

LION, BUDDHA, CAGE
(a paradelle*)

Some kind of music plays there.
Some kind of music plays there.
Don’t know who you are, but I love you.
Don’t know who you are, but I love you.
I play some kind of love there. But, who
are you? Music, don’t you know. 

What memory have you lost?
What memory have you lost?
Shape-shifters can sing of trees.
Shape-shifters can sing of trees.
Lost shifters have memory,
shape of what trees can sing.

Lion in cage or the cage in lion?
Lion in cage or the cage in lion?
If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him.
If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him.
Lion on the road, meet Buddha in the cage—
If Him, or you, or lion in the cage.

Shifters’ memory have lost shape
of what trees sing, play
some kind of love there. Who
are you? Music, but don’t you know
if lion on the road can meet Buddha in the cage—
You, I, Him, or lion in the cage.

*The ‘paradelle’ originated as a faux form invented by US poet Billy Collins in a parody of fixed forms like the villanelle. It, however, has taken on its own life, even spawning an anthology by well-known poets (The Paradelle. Edited by Theresa Welford. Los Angeles: Red Hen Press 2006). As described by Collins, the ‘paradelle’ demands “four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines…must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words.
imilarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only these words.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradelle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Norbert Hirschhorn received a Master’s in Fine Arts degree from Vermont College in 1994. His poems have been published in over three dozen journals, and four full collections: A Cracked River, Slow Dancer Press, London, 1999; Mourning in the Presence of a Corpse, Dar al-Jadeed, Lebanon, 2008; Monastery of the Moon, Dar al-Jadeed, Lebanon, 2012; To Sing Away the Darkest Days, Holland Park Press, London 2013. Please feel free to visit Norbert's website at www.bertzpoet.com.

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