Guest Poet

One of my favorite literary websites is Cosmoetica. It has something like 50,000 hits per day I believe, so it is fair to say that I am not the only one who thinks highly of Dan and Jessica Schneider. A little while ago, they e-mailed me saying that they were asked to do some work for a great website called Monsters and Critics (you’ll find a link to this website in the right sidebar of my blog, under “Literary Links”), which has approximately 150,000 visitors today if I am not mistaken. Of course I have congratulated the couple with this privately, but let me also do it publicly: it is a great opportunity for them, and… they deserve it. Well done, congrats.

Monsters and Critics might also publish some reviews written by me in the near future. Not reviews of novels, but of political and historical books. Ten days after a review will be published at C&M, I will publish the review here and at my personal blog.

Anyway, the above as an aside, the purpose of this post is to share the following poem, written by Dan Schneider:

ANOTHER LIFE

An electric wire holds life, like this dawn,
high over the gutter, of the infinite
city, where Jacob Schwarz sees his only Keds,
dangling above him. He cannot get them down,

though he shakes like the dark wing of an unmade
bird, under his bosom, for a wind to blow
him to freedom. He learns, like others, the way

they multiply, and rot, on utility
wires, and that Zebby O’Toole runs the show
on Harmon Street. In a few days they will be

worthless, for the weather, and the sun-blanched white
Jacob mouths vague locutions. His curbside seat
ends any thoughts of what loss is. For his Keds
his head moves 80° in the starsight.

Copyright Dan Schneider