Envy
Courage
Desire Lines
One-Way
Strategy
Two-Way
I needed to be
alone with that trout
in the kitchen sink
before Dad gutted it—
its slick black eye
gave in to my pinkie
and I turned it
like a globe—
I wanted to see
myself inside out.
Bring a lamp
into this room.
I want the last
thing you see
to be my face.
I’m on a blue bench at a bus stop not waiting for a bus.
The last time I was in this town was the last time
we spoke—I gave you a parting gift, The Complete Works,
and the Norwegian musician’s friend with Asperger’s
stood up in the middle of our poetry
lunch and started to shout-sing Heal the world.
You and I had just crossed the street together to sit
in a synagogue that’s no longer a synagogue.
We were trying to talk about the inadequacy of language,
which is to say we’d arrived at that street we had to cross
by cutting through a small park on a path
worn by the human desire to take the shortest way
by any means. We took this shortcut without thinking,
not talking about why we hadn’t talked since that last time,
and when we reached the sidewalk before
the no-longer-a-synagogue synagogue, a boy on rollerblades
crashed at our feet, held his breath the way kids do
when they’re in pain but not hurt, looked up at us, and called out.
Beyond the evergreens, through this
Carpathian fog, you
stepped into nowhere and knew it—
I’m alone on this train.
I’m learning backgammon
to save my marriage.
I line up two black pieces
on the white side of the board.
Your clothes on the line
above my head, dry for days.
I could take myself out
with a hit, but I go easy—
I’m on the balcony
filling my home with gates.
I’m playing backgammon
with myself the wrong way,
you say, but look how
I’ve become my own best
opponent: I lose to myself.
I’m always sending myself where I am
now so I can see where I was later.
Tara Skurtu is a two-time U.S. Fulbright grantee and recipient of two Academy of American Poets prizes and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry. She is the author of The Amoeba Game.
