When I see my friends in a different field,
I wave to them and they wave back,
but what we shout is so strange to hear,
the wind seems to carry the import of our words
to someone somewhere else.
We’re left grinning and waving, then—
because we have companions who, impatient,
want to go on with the walk and conversation—
we have to go on, almost without choosing to,
almost without noticing
this thing we’re lightly driven to do.
We look back—at whom we saw and let walk on
in a field in the evening with different companions,
remembering (as if seeing old neighborhoods
beneath their changes): someone
we once knew remaining and remaining, no matter
how long we walk and how often we look
back—until whoever’s walking with us stops
and demands we catch up, physically and in thought,
and, because that’s what we owe, we do.
In a room with windows in each of four walls, a young man props his feet on the table.
The apple trees rattle.
The wind moves in waves past the garden
where okra and lettuce lie bent and bruised from the rain.
Where tomatoes and melons lie rotting.
Where the man lies rotting with wasps in his eyes.
Where nothing lies.
In a room with windows in each of four walls, a young man lies sprawled on a blanket, dreaming of frogs.
He bathes at night in a pond by a slippery elm, singing,
take them take me home foggy home froggy home.
The room has windows in two of four walls.
There are no crickets. No one sings.
Frogs troop through the fields riding the backs of iron turtles.
The apple trees snap in the high wind, split and lie down.
There is no room. No one is sleeping.
The apple trees lie like weeds in the yard.
A man sits with his hand on a calendar, turning the pages.
There is no pond.
He stands on the threshold watching the rain. There is no roof.
The crickets are singing.
The crickets are quiet.
The crickets have huge eyes.
He patches the roof and sleeps beneath it,
plants a field of melons by the pond.
There are no frogs.
He sits in a field of rain where turtles rust, says they will be waiting they
will wait forever by the river’s mud.
There are no turtles.
In a room without windows, a man sits with his thumbs in his eyes, says
I remember ribbons of dust.
There is no rain.
Says we will be found with flowers tucked behind our ears.
Says I still remember another spring
the slow wring of cast iron tears
bells in the morning seeking the blind
among tin thimbles of frost left on the hills
and trash piles burning in their little
hollows among the pines.
There were no pines.
There is no man.
The crickets remember nothing.
Because I was the paper boy,
I knew when everyone was
and wasn’t in town.
I stole for fun and for the small
heavy objects I could tell
wouldn’t be missed for a long while.
The looking in ticking rooms,
the discrete rummaging
in strangers’ closets and garages
in the early mornings
of the neighborhood
I kept for myself.
I gave my girlfriends cameras.
I gave my father power tools.
I gave my mother a stained glass watch.
Escaped from God’s hidden zoo,
hunger takes up residence in you,
nibbling your patience, siphoning pride,
enjoying the warm wet conditions inside.
You tried to stop it (but were too slow).
You shouted for God (as if God didn’t know).
Now, you unclench and allow it to slither and shudder.
You feed it like a cow feeds its own udder.
If God had wanted his hunger back,
he needed to have split it from its snack
before I grew so fond of His pet
and it grew fond of me in secret.
Now, however, we’re a single creature,
neither it nor I, no student, no teacher.
Apologies, Boss, if there’s been a miscue.
There’s nothing left in this house to rescue.
"David Bruzina Ph.D. - In 2006, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at Ohio University having completed his PhD in American Literature and Creative Writing there the previous year. He also holds an MA in Philosophy from Virginia Tech, an MFA in Poetry from UNC-Greensboro and a BA in English, Philosophy and Sociology from Macalester College. From 2001-2004, he directed the Gathering Place Writing Project, which involved clients of Athens County (Ohio) Mental Health Services in the local literary community. In the summers, he continues to teach in, and direct, the "Area II" Critical Thinking and Intellectual History division of the North Carolina Governor's School (West).
A dedicated generalist with interests ranging from Southern fiction and contemporary poetry to literary theory and the history of philosophy, Dr. Bruzina enjoys exploring the relationships between literary or theoretical texts and first person extracurricular experiences.
Dr. Bruzina's poems have appeared in a number of journals, including StorySouth, Cultural Logic, From the Fishouse, Third Coast and the Greensboro Review. He has recently finished his first book manuscript and hopes it will appear in print soon. His short review (of USCA faculty member) Roy Seeger's first book The Boy Whose Hands Were Birds is forthcoming from the International Poetry Review."
source: university of south carolina aiken, faculty website.
i love my family.
