{"id":10830,"date":"2015-10-29T17:33:16","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T15:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=10830"},"modified":"2015-10-29T17:33:16","modified_gmt":"2015-10-29T15:33:16","slug":"poems-by-jeremy-nathan-marks-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=10830","title":{"rendered":"poems by Jeremy Nathan Marks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olympiastadion<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My throat was sore in Berlin<\/p>\n

Als das Kind Kind war<\/em><\/p>\n

so I missed the Reichstag fire<\/p>\n

but on television saw<\/p>\n

the Wall come<\/p>\n

down<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

You couldn\u2019t walk for<\/p>\n

the myriad cranes<\/p>\n

taking off and landing<\/p>\n

with the same beat of wings<\/p>\n

as chiselers<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I had more hair then<\/p>\n

before tides of aging made<\/p>\n

it thin<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My chin was white and<\/p>\n

face handsome though pale<\/p>\n

and solemn<\/p>\n

but my body not so slender.<\/p>\n

At the sight of Olympiastadion<\/p>\n

I felt a shortness of breath<\/p>\n

just as when I fumbled my papers<\/p>\n

at the checkpoint<\/p>\n

where deer made bounding<\/p>\n

white points in a<\/p>\n

brown field.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To drink schnapps beneath<\/p>\n

the Kieferns, nein<\/em><\/p>\n

it was still long before noon<\/p>\n

and I had yet to read that scrawl<\/p>\n

in the refrigerator top notebook which<\/p>\n

said you can\u2019t go home again<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even though they tell me that Aeschylus wrote<\/p>\n

\u2018Exiles feed on hope, we all know that\u2019<\/p>\n

and \u2018boast while you feel brave like a cock<\/p>\n

beside his hen!\u2019<\/p>\n

The city was too large<\/p>\n

my eyes were too red<\/p>\n

and going home to Washington<\/p>\n

scoured no horizon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I could only follow wooden crossbeams<\/p>\n

between two iron rails.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

J. Strauss\u2019s waltz<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At sixteen I wanted to dance J. Strauss\u2019s waltz<\/p>\n

in Viennese ballrooms among buxom<\/p>\n

Contessas<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It probably sounds like a lie when I say how I<\/p>\n

found defenestration more interesting<\/p>\n

than their cup size<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But, alas, it is true<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then I never had a penny in my purse<\/p>\n

but I did have therapists to nurse.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I told him and I told her that I needed an<\/p>\n

education of the hands, that none of the things<\/p>\n

I was set to say sounded like the Great Voice and<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And I was too young to be a quote thief<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In April, once I turned seventeen I planted<\/p>\n

an ornamental pear whose snow white bloom<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Still stinks; a juvenile, it attracted armies of ants<\/p>\n

who humped their way across the rut of that arboreal<\/p>\n

elk while I lay on my back beneath its camisole listening<\/p>\n

to robins propagate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Vitamin Sales <\/strong><\/p>\n

The journey I\u2019ve made transforms the face of the world. \u2013<\/em>Eurydice (Orph\u00e9e<\/em>)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Who now reads the Lou Reeds<\/p>\n

through wild clarinets that chip their performer\u2019s<\/p>\n

teeth<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Well-furnished Lower East Side<\/p>\n

coffee cups replete with books about Third World<\/p>\n

revolutions<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Che<\/em> and Ungovernable Cities<\/p>\n

of suits trying to dodge their hydrant rush<\/p>\n

of ghetto dialogues, broken windows, the uncollected<\/p>\n

garbage pinned to February pavement<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wilson and Bratton<\/p>\n

please find a way to make the rats go away:<\/p>\n

nickel penalties, jaywalk laws and a valediction<\/p>\n

upon the Piss Christ<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Under the curfews of transcendental meditation<\/p>\n

please don\u2019t go looking for the mountain<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The answer is on Wilshire<\/p>\n

where a deal done wrong over the sale of vitamins<\/p>\n

kept Eurydice from coming home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Olympiastadion   My throat was sore in Berlin Als das Kind Kind war so I missed the Reichstag fire but on television saw the Wall come down<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1098,77],"tags":[1099,1123,1095],"class_list":["post-10830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-44","category-english","tag-egophobia-44","tag-english","tag-jeremy-nathan-marks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-2OG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10831,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10830\/revisions\/10831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}