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 water
the arrival of emptied air
come back
we say
come back

Subscribe

Copyright © 2020-2021 The Banyan Review, LLC