Eric Basso (decius@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us) was born Baltimore, 1947, with work appearing in Fiction International, Exquisite Corpse, Central Park, and the British magazine Margin. The author of 21 plays, his The Golem Triptych was published by Asylum Arts, and his novel Bartholomew Fair is due out from Hi Jinx Press next year.



WHAT THIS IS


this is the tanker that
flushed out its bilge at sea
the woman without a shadow
the cousin who went to the war
and returned with dead flies
sewn to his lips

this is a string of whispers
along a sandy coast
the windbitten squall that
comes awash in their wake
between the sun the reef
and the sinking sail

this is the thing that crawls up the throat
the tail obliterating the word written
with a wet stick in the cinders
the armed head after centuries of rust
the name I am trying to forget
one last burnt offering to the night

December 11, 1989






THE DEAF MAN


I slap the deaf man
his shoes are empty
the gravel he's carried
through miles of woods
there's nothing in it

the white fiberglas basin
brims with boiling water
the deaf man's head
I hold it under for minutes
a bubble breaks the surface

your father's uncle
the one who sailed around
the world in an iron tub
found little more than
the deaf man can provide

a parrot shrieks inside
the deaf man's house
no one hears how well its
beak resists the nightmare
gnawing at the walls

I interrogate the deaf man
the grilled windows reel
the room goes gray
the floor green with blood
and still no answer


March 31, 1995






THE EARTHWORKS


I walked to the outskirts of the city
with my dead father
this is where we have to go
our separate ways he said

it was not a dream
I watched as my father went off
looking younder than I'd seen him
in years and thought to myself
it's a fitting way to end a mourning
that can never end until my death

I remembered how my grandfather
told me he dreamed of his father
who died of asphyxiation when
the gaslight went out in his room
get on my shoulders he said
they flew into the night
Pa clinging to his father's back

before I returned to the city
I passed by the earthworks
it's the long way back

I stumbled and my boot kicked loose
some planking that bridged
a ditch at the foot of a hill
where one of the workmen
was sleeping off his lunch
the noise woke him

he knew my name and told me
another poet used to visit the site
in the early days when there was
still hope the work here
could be completed

you're small for a poet he said
not like that other one
he was a chain smoker
had a tattoo on his left wrist
I can't remember what it was
what happened to your hands

as I walked back the shadow
of a plane came over
the sun moved behind a cloud


February 12, 1995


Eric Basso

---

back to author list