Howie Faerstein

Howie Faerstein is the author of two chapbooks: Play a Song on the Drums, he said and Out of Order (Main Street Rag) and two full-length collections: Dreaming of the Rain in Brooklyn and Googootz and Other Poems, both published by Press 53. His poetry and reviews can be found in Great River Review, Nimrod, CutThroat, Off the Coast, Rattle, upstreet, Mudfish and on-line in Verse Daily, Nixes Mate, Gris-Gris, Peacock Journal, and Connotation. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he volunteers as a citizenship mentor at the Center for New Americans, is co-poetry editor of CutThroat, A Journal of the Arts, and lives in Florence, MA.

In No Other World But This

when Jacob and then Esther died there was absence but it seemed natural
when Lloyd died, when Terry and then Ken died though expected it was unnatural
when Ann and Chana succumbed again it felt predictable Life improbable imperative and yet
in no other world but ours refugia of all that survived earth’s last glacial maximum
when Kathy and Tomás died when Ed and Irv were taken off life support when Carl died and Cliff then Nancy—
porcelain pelican beak repaired at fix-it clinic counter to throwaway culture Edith promised to mend it now she’s dead
a catalog of departures a series of amputations but still not sufficient to tear me in two
when Gummy and Emma and all the other cats and dogs were put down or died on their pet beds
 it seemed enough—
like the end of waterthe arrival of emptied air come back we say come back

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