Rick Barot Poems

And what part of his reflection will tell me who I am,
that I am standing a little away, wanting in on his story?
...

I want from love only the beginning.
Not this hillside above the twilight-awakening
city, where you are more absent
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Here is the dusk with its pink plastic bag
in the tines of a branch, the wheeze
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It turns out there's a difference between a detail
and an image. If the dandelion on the sidewalk is
mere detail, the dandelion inked on a friend's bicep
is an image because it moves when her body does,
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The boulder that is bigger than a house,
perched on the edge of another boulder, painted gold
and prayed to by monks in saffron robes.
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I think about the mornings it saved me
to look at the hearts penknifed on the windows
of the bus, or at the initials scratched
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in the museum, the heavy marble busts
on their white plinths, I recognize one likeness
as my uncle, the retired accountant
whose mind, like a conquered country, is turning
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The poem is a letter opener
and it is the letter that is answered
or not answered, held first by the uncle
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You don't have to understand it
but you will carry it anyway.
A couple whose baby died,
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Bridges and streets. The neon like candy.
Brake lights blooming in rain. Rain.
Concrete. Long live the concrete of cities.
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