August Kleinzahler

For Lee Harwood

Behind the château, its celebrated ‘candle-snuffer’ towers and Gothic traceries engraved and worn proudly on the labels of how many bottles of Pinot and Bourgogne,

the old caretaker sleeps in the shadow of the cistern, its wood sweating and frayed, the autumnal, late afternoon light bringing to this rustic tableau the kind of orange-tinted, unworldly radiance...

Every evening smoke blows in from the sea, sea smoke, ghost vapour of lost frigates, sunken destroyers. It hangs over the eucalyptus grove, cancels the hills, curls around garbage sacks outside the lesbian bar.

And every evening the black bus arrives, the black Information bus from down the Peninsula, unloading the workers at the foot of the block. They wander off, this way and that, into the...

Shoot the freak Cold wind, boardwalk nearly empty You know you wanna

A cluster of hip-hop Lubavitch punks, shirt tails out, talking tough You shoot him

he don’t shoot back Keeper-flatties thrashing in buckets, out there on the pier

Shoot the freakin’ freak A regular family of man out there, fishing for fluke

and blues in that wind How you gonna build memories Everything shut down

...

Born on the Lower East Side in 1904 to immigrant Russian Jewish parents, Louis Zukofsky spent his entire life in New York City, reading and writing and doing as little else as possible. He was abstemious, hypochondriac, a chain-smoker; he cared little for food, took almost no exercise and insisted that the windows of his apartment be shut tight at all times: he was very susceptible to...

Spindrift of grunion spume in moonlight Granular, sorrel-coloured, ammoniac Upon the tide’s retreat A meniscus of foam hissing in sand The milt bores deep

His presence was more than unwelcome The change room strictly off-limits Except for the dancers

Relish of wild duck cooked with olivesThe slight scent of prussic acidA faint whiff of overripe peaches

These impromptu