Skip to main content

Footfall on Footfall by William Doreski

In the glare of Boylston Street
the oscillations of our orbit
seem exaggerated, warping

skyscrapers to feint at each other

like Olympians with epees.

We walk as if the concrete


sidewalk couldn’t possibly crack

and drop us into the subway.

We watch the skyscrapers duel

with each other and the sky,

and refrain from pointless irony.

Summers in Boston always hurt


with poignancies we rarely share.

The gloss of shop windows scorches

across our bodies as we pass,

but that’s not the pain I respect

for textual and historic depth.

Maybe you recall the woman


crying and smashing a bag

of groceries on the gray façade

of the building on St. Germain

where we lay on the roof all night

in the deepest part of summer.

Boylston offers single point


perspective we gladly employ

to orient ourselves to the east.

Walking with our naked selves

held safely in trust, we impress

footfall that overlaps footfall

we laid down many years ago.


The shuddering of the planet,

however slight, acknowledges

our presence, our small weight

warping geometries we studied

in school without learning how

subtly they might apply to us.


---

William Doreski has published three critical studies and several collections of poetry. His work has appeared in many print and online journals. He has taught at Emerson College, Goddard College, Boston University, and Keene State College. His most recent book is Stirring the Soup.  You can find out more about his work at the following link: williamdoreski.blogspot.com

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Home by Jessa Forest

Home scratches at her shingles with tree branch fingers, pulls the air conditioning unit close to her grimy aluminum siding, and keens an empty song of mourning. We found her wandering the tornado snarled wild three months ago, starved and lonely. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself, you see? We fed her shards of dining room tables, kindling for the fireplace, and cast iron bathtubs clawed feet first. She was slow to recover so we gutted her plumbing, ripped out her nerves, and rewired the electricity. She let the water in every time it rained so we put a new roof on her and let her out for regular walks around the wolf pen. Let her mingle with the vultures, I said, let her feel useful and clean up the dead but no one wanted to listen. We found rot an mold in her corners, infused her insulation with antibiotics, and quarantined her for two weeks while she belched ladderback chairs, sofa cushions, wind chimes, and broken bookcases. She still has her bad days. After feeding time

“Are You So Tired Then, Stranger?” by Ace Boggess

  —Dick Allen, “B&B”    Wind exhausts with its icy fists. Knives of rain wear me down, & leaves in their helicopter swirls like leaflets dropped from a plane. October depletes me, & November. They’ve too much busyness. They send me spinning, dancing, lonely with the rake, the broom. I surrender, collapsing like an old barn, debris of me piling in a chair with clear view of the television.  News is on. It spends me. Talk of politics, also. I’d like  to shut up the voices that fatigue. They hum like a B-flat in the pipes. They bicker & scold, condemn. They expend me like carrying  groceries up a flight of stairs  until I’m too drained to care  which side they’re on. --- Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including  Escape Envy  (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021),  I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So , and  The Prisoners . His writing has appeared in  Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review,  and other journals. An ex-c

Paths by O.T. Park

I like walking worn down tracks Where the beat of human feet Has steadily marked the time. Paths where trees eclipse the sky and where dabbled light anoints The knotted and gnarled ground. Long lanes scarred by raised roots Which form illegible inscriptions; Where vegetation creates a nave and the trail itself an endless aisle. A placid place that celebrates Feet moving in communion. --- O.T. Park lives and works in Guildford. He has had poems published in Eye Flash Poetry, The Dawntreader and The Cannon's Mouth.