Poetry – Page 18 – Michigan Quarterly Review

“The Taxi Driver Laments,” by Adrianne Kalfopoulou

What’s happening, did you hear? / I want to get home to catch the news tonight / but can’t say no to someone who needs a ride / —there’s no metro again? / There’s always something. / We’re losing our minds in all this. / But you know I’m a Socialist, I’ve never / voted for anything right-wing, ever, but / what’s happened to him—he’s a good guy / you know. I’ve had him in this cab / when he was the minister of education, / he’s a good guy, I mean I like him / but something’s wrong, how did he get us / into this crazy situation?

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Returning to Greece

“Winter Nihilism,” by Tom Luhrmann

Leave a Comment / Rachel Farrell

The objects in the garden, though, / are of a different order. / Remember them. / The white bricks will sustain you / when everything else seems meaningless; / the gardening tools will take you further / than any ideology; / the flag will stand between you and despair.

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“Hill,” by Margaret Reges

Leave a Comment / Rachel Farrell

Tangled against the river the red-gray thump of the feet of deer in the half-frozen mud and the sear of dry branches torn from the living, a yellow-orange strip of barkless wood on the trunk and the tender wet where the branch was torn crystallizing in the cold, and trees like a mesh of black oil.

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“Madame L. Describes the Siege of Paris,” by Beth Ann Fennelly

Leave a Comment / Rachel Farrell

It seemed almost a joke those first few days, / our handsome soldiers yawning with ennui. / When Bismarck sneered “The Paris bourgeoisie / will break after a day without eclairs,” / we laughed. Then had a day without eclairs.

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“Devil’s Night” by Edward Hirsch

Leave a Comment / Rachel Farrell

He saw teenagers carrying flammable cans / of kerosene and boxes of wooden matches, torching / the discarded carcasses of Fords and Chevies, / spreading flames through abandoned buildings / and unused factories, lighting one-story houses / on narrow lots in small neighborhoods.

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“The New World,” by Chana Bloch

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My uncle killed a man and was proud of it. / Some guy with a knife came at him in Flatbush / and he knocked the fucker to the ground. / The sidewalk finished the job. // By then he’d survived two wives and / a triple bypass. He carried the plastic tubing in his pocket / and would show it to you, to anyone. / He’d unbutton his shirt right there on the street / to show off the scar.

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