Two Poems
Marine Lover
At the top of the Gansevoort a
mountain shining Whyte leather
couches edged on a pool
sunbathing in morning air
we were drinking Standard vodka
You called my name again and
again sang along a siren’s song
as I stared long into the blue
of noon bloom into June’s day
So I stood under my father’s silence
his face turned too toward a lurid kind
of impatience with the lure of mankind
Calling him beyond us another voice
a more motherly voice that made us
All shimmer merrily with
The light of
The merely
Inconsequent
Night Scene
So,
I drove all the way to the shore
where I found an old friend
asleep in a beached boat,
hugging an oar, stinking
of brackish wine
My friend woke up
with a long and sustained wail
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh
as I offered him rosé
from crowded bar on the sand
named after St. Petersburg
as in Leningrad
Here, everyone bears a cross and
I come back home with a nom-de-plume
light as a feather
in the town of Shelley’s death
the tide rising in Miami Waves
a neon sign blinking S. Sandra
He reminded me of that time
we looked for ghosts and speed
the phantom of a thousand hours
as we got lost
with no idea
of where was the sea
and where was the shore
until we heard the distant sound
of a girl singing
the same three notes,
the same three notes
Of fear and dream,
and death and birth
For love and hate and
gloom and hope and
it seemed like the right way, and
we walked right into the water
As our ankles got wet
we wondered of this broke bliss
This honored poverty, the rich in spirit,
This thankless cross of ankh
and why sunlight can’t be forever
We pushed the rowboat
through the spray, hearing
screams sounding behind us
we pushed until we couldn’t breathe
the anaerobic lights blinking
on my retina the stars spinning
we rowed and rowed
until the rope pulled
secured at land
and we stayed there
At the end of songs
in the sarabande
of the midnight roar
Anton Ivanov grew up between Italy and Bulgaria. He is a founder of Black Sun Lit and his work has been published on Wonder, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and Blush Magazine.
