From The Literary Review

BEDLOE'S ISLAND, 3 A.M.

by Barbara F. Lefcowitz

So many names without faces,
shoes without feet,
darkened market stalls.
I walk past the wrecked tower, the bands
of electronic headlines
pulsing out news of Pearl Harbor, Bataan;
walk past the museum of failed marriages
without looking inside; past the black-eyed
school of no lessons;
the shrine for lost raptures & products of conception
to the stone pool
you demanded I find
behind that old house we once shared-
something about a boat, also stone,
I would have to prepare for our journey.
And food: would I scrub the pots,
fill them roots & tubers, graceful seaweed?

But all I can find are these hollows,
deep sockets with no eyes.
On the Jersey shore a brushfire.
A woman becoming a torch
with no Statue to hold her.