Two Poems By Sam Donsky

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Midnight in Paris

Here in Paris the wind is dragging
us through the nervousness of what
money means. Women’s clothing,
manic repositories of seasons,
Satan, expatriate Manhattan,
art!, a sculptural exile into which
The Great Bras fall. We’re coming
on & as cosmos; each phone call
gothic & frock-coated — it’s
becoming so the metaphors
are more on the mark than
we’d prefer. (A brief sub-poem
about American Ex-Boyfriends:
Can anything be done / To stop
them? / Were their apologies /
Not honestly the best in the
world? / Owen’s Oxford opens /
Like an alternate entrance. /
Sixty years from now / Even
our chests will be long gone.)
Threat of rain, see-through-shirt
Test Ban Treaty, hierarchy
of bangs since the one
in the books. Art means saying
“here we go!” a lot; money means
not carrying an umbrella
sometimes. These are the things
that will deliver us from zero.
Texture of midnight, day of
rest, pageant for the change
you wish to see in these
clothes. Paris: “I have
done something terrible” — 
this weather is the last art
lesson we may ever need.
Evidence suggests beauty
looks guilty even from the moon.

Bridesmaids

Our proposals cling their
paradise to the sides of
themselves nearest Mars.
Pickup line, dive bar, the
emperor’s new, comma,
charm: “I love you like a
math solution to an
insurance problem.” We
get divorced every time.
Men are from accuracy;
women, precision
 — none
of those poems actually
turn out to be true.
Elliptical motion,
smattering of unfinished
children, 8-Ball-Shaking
Fellowship at the School
of Brass Rings: the newer
tenses tend to play by less
than phonological rules.
Sake-of-sleep anomaly;
drunken groped analytic:
If there’s a will there’s
a nostalgia for it. If one
must say “Marry me”
in one’s twenties
one must prepare
to hear “We’re born
not knowing language”
in return. Non-terminal
symbols, string
of dispossessed beers:
the hours that are the
answers between the
minutes & me. One must
have a stake in one’s
standards’ traits
beyond their perfection.
“I love you like a good
semantic tailspin.”
We speak now &
mostly hold our peace.

Sam Donsky is a graduate student living in Philadelphia. The poems come from his nearly finished first manuscript, Poems vs. The Volcano, a collection of 100 poems for 100 films.

For poems galore and so much more come on down to the Poetry Store. Which is what we call The Poetry Section’s vast archive! “The Poetry Store.” Adorable, right? Anyway, there sure are a bunch more poems in there.

You may contact the editor at [email protected].