Charles Fishman
Excerpt from Anthology Vol 1, No 2
A Child of the Millennium
He’s five months old now—a little short
on experience—but if he could speak,
Jake would sit with the Dalai Lama on a red
and golden throne and hold forth on happiness
and compassion on freeing the mind from vengeance
and regret and living in exile from the sacred home:
he’s seen the end of days . . . and the beginning.
He doesn’t know about race or gender
or that we are murdering the planet that the earth
is smoldering with underground fires and with the bone-
fires of hatred He doesn’t know about ethnicity
or religion and will not take with him into the new century
memories of calcined corpses or an interior landscape
peopled with napalmed children.
What Jake is best at has nothing to do with genocide
or the acid tides of history He travels in realms
where tenderness is a face that brushes his face
He feels the strength of those around him and their love
and time ticks at his wrist like the gentlest rain His eyes
are the most translucent lakes, his smiles tiny suns
that shine a clear light on the living.
***
Charles has a new 2009 title out in publication, and you can check it out at one of the following:
Casa de Snapdragon (publisher)
Author Bio
Charles Fishman's books include Mortal Companions, The Firewalkers, Blood
to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, and The Death Mazurka, which
was selected by the American Library Association as one of the outstanding
books of the year (1989) and nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in
Poetry. His new collection of poetry, Country of Memory, will be published
by Rattapallax Press in Spring 2002. He currently serves as Associate
Editor of The Drunken Boat, www.thedrunkenboat.com.
