ANDREY GRITSMAN

COLISEUM
 

Geometry of death.
Sun blasted oval,
Sandblasted stone.
Stale bread,
A song of wind
Long gone
To the olive groves
Of memory.
 

Interlacement, entwinement
On the twilight
Of the valley.
A tourist trap by day,
Cemetery of stone
At night.
 

Now you know:
Salt on the soil of Carthage,
Salt beneath Masada,
Sail on the sails
Toward nothingness
Of the bloodhounds
Of dead Caesars
To the dead end.
 

Somnolent siesta
Of Italian shadows
In the courtyard:
Pasta is fresh, sauce
Of the ancient recipe,
Like sun, blasting impartially,
Blissfully, melting make up
On the mask of the face
Of a lively tour guide
Of Berber origin.
 

TRIANGLE
 

I thought we'd known each other
for a long time
until I realized that memory
is a tree losing leaves in the wind
every time the season changes.
 

The bare branches are drawn against the sky
and a house behind the tree becomes visible,
the windows are open and the silhouettes
are moving around the room.
 

Then they leave - one after another
and what's left is the coffee cup on the table,
a cigarette burning, pale TV screen,
a black and white picture of a woman
in a bonnet on a magazine stand.
 

It's quiet; the only sounds come
from outside and the only connection remaining
between me and him is her
trace in the air, such as women leave in passing,
even when they pretend
they were never there.
 

Andrey Gritsman was born and raised in Moscow, Russia and made his home in New York a long time ago. He writes poetry and essays in both languages and claims that it is done by two different poets. In the course of having fun writing poetry he published in many periodicals and also a few collections of verse in both vernaculars. In his non-existent free time he works as a physician. Andrey runs a popular Intercultural Poetry Series at the fabulous Cornelia Street Café in unison with incomparable Angelo Verga.