A sonnet, on demand
For my Facebook friends who wanted to see the Parisian sonnet I mentioned...
The poem appeared in the latest issue of the International Poetry Review, one dedicated to contemporary poetry from Romania. Since 1975, this fine publication has been bringing together poetry from around the globe, in the original language and in translation, as well as poetry from English-speaking realms.
Mark Smith-Soto edits this journal, with the able assistance of a number of associate, consulting, and guest editors. The journal is published out of UNC-Greensboro. A two-issue subscription is $12. For more information about the magazine, visit this webpage.
So - this sonnet - based on a December stay in an apartment in the Second Arrondissement, a place of amazing contrasts and a low incidence of tourists!
2nd Honeymoon
Moonlight on watered cobbles
of Montorgueil:
limp endive, aging coquilles, cigarettes
bob down the gutter. “My feet,” I plead, hobble
past cave et boucherie, Stohrer’s baguettes.
We sleep among the great,
on Marie-Stuart,
pres de where
Madeleine drops her veils
to end as Saint-Denis, (yet
after dark
aren’t all cats gray, and lips
alike, female
and male?) Our nights are
loud and mornings rue-
full. Look – on this place – a severed head listens
for a loving word. I lean
into the statue’s
stony hand, and on
command, I grin.
Late marriages, like
poems, we revise,
but cannot step into the
same street twice.
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