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Dante Di Stefano

Two Poems by Dante Di Stefano

Dante Di StefanoDante Di Stefano's "Reading Dostoyevsky at Seventeen" was chosen by Dana Gioia for The Best American Poetry 2018. "Exodus," the second poem here, is of the same vintage. -- DL

Reading Dostoyevsky at Seventeen

In those days, my dreams always changed titles
before they were finished and I wanted
only to love in that insane tortured way
of poor dear Dmitri Karamazov.
Suddenly, I was speaking the language
of lapdog and samovar. This is
the ballroom, the barracks, the firing squad.
This is the old monk with the beard of bees.
This is the orange lullaby the moon
[of the moon] will sing you when it’s grieving.
This is the province you escape by train,
fleeing heavy snow and eternal elk.
This is the part where I take your hand in
my hand and I tell you we are burning.

Exodus

             It takes a lifetime’s blindness to see one’s father.

                        —Cid Corman

My father mumbled forth his violated commandments for half my life.  I inscribed them on incense and holy water and when I drank them they tasted like cigarette ashes in a coca cola can.  There were no tablets save the pills he didn’t take.  Like Moses stuttering to the stones and scrub brush, his dictates turned me into a desperate Aaron, bewildered, dutifully translating the fire raging in a reed thicket into the voice of God.  He slept for days on end, dreaming apple orchards. He believed the smell of college elevator steel was sacred.  Once he pronounced the stars memory-less pickpockets. He decried windows.  He expounded upon the intractability of silverware. I fought him twice and both times he had the strength of the archangel ascending into heaven, swooping down the mountain. Birds were not his emissaries. Canaan, he would have us all know, was a broken dinner plate and asparagus-spattered walls. From the edge of his hospital bed, I finally saw him unfolding in time and I could almost see him. Last night, as he nodded in his recliner, weak from the new medicine he’s taking, I knew no staff would split this rock.

from the archives; first posted December 18, 2020


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Radio

I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later
to the greatness
of Teddy Wilson
"After You've Gone"
on the piano
in the corner
of the bedroom
as I enter
in the dark


from New and Selected Poems by David Lehman

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