Family Tree

So there you are with this Irish father,
Italian mother, a related-to-
the-Queen-but-unknown-to-her ancestor
far, far back, but less far back a Jew,
maternal grandmama, heroically rescued
from a concentration camp, which makes
you Jewish, too. They called your father ‘black’
as in ‘black Irish’, for his eyes were blue
just like your other nan, who mid-life married
a sailor who crossed the seas from Africa –
and high above the royal branch she valued
him, although a duke’s the apex of
the family tree. So you, our darling grandson,
seedling still, what can you be, but handsome?
 

Leah Fritz

published in The Interpreter’s House

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Four Gentlemen Reminisce About Allen Ginsberg

They talked. They didn’t ask – but I was there.
I had a very different take on him.
Quiet and attentive, he didn’t stare
 
piercingly at me or anyone. Aware
of everything – the aura of the courtroom,
(They talked. They didn’t ask, but I was there)
 
lawyers, judge, the ritual of fear –
his eyes cast down, he read his notes, seemed
quiet and attentive. He didn’t stare,
 
not straight away, not till he had to swear.
Then suddenly he shook his finger, aimed
(They talked. They didn’t ask. But I was there)
 
and fired a fusillade of verses at The War.
Barricaded behind the bench, the judge kept shtum.
Quiet and attentive, he didn’t stare,
 
but waited to dismiss the case, prepared
for anything but this, a mad man’s poem.
They talked. They didn’t ask. But I was there,
quiet and attentive. He didn’t stare.
 

Leah Fritz

published in the Journal of the Poetry on the Lake Competition,
commended by Carol Ann Duffy, adjudicator

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Piazza San Marco

It was spring. Too early spring, before
the Easter innocents and local rogues
profaned the set, the hungry birds performed
their cooing begging ritual in droves.
Early morning, too. Cafes still closed.
Fishmongers and garbage scows along
the Grand Canal. Two lonely pigeons strolled
across the great expanse till church bells stung
them into sudden flight. Surprising cold,
the light which wavered with the water’s lung,
foreshadowing a drowning end to all
this ‘history,’ in time called by the young.
 
So whitely, quietly snow fell on stone,
laced the terra cotta and was gone.
 

Leah Fritz

first published in P N Review;
in collection, Going, Going…, 2007, bluechrome

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Manhattan Memory

A madman lived across the street from me.
I saw him only at night, his face
dimly lit through slatted blinds. Three
windows, one blackened and swollen by
a rectangle controlling his breadth
of air, faced mine. Across a square
green room, bookcase-lined
                                                   he paced.
 
I am a starer into space. Smoking
and meditating (in the old-fashioned
sense), I lay across my bed
like a housebound dog. My eyes
on the vague shapes of night
in a city street, my ears
inattentively absorbing sounds,
                                                   I stared.
 
And so each night we met. For several
years I watched him pace –‘watched’
as I ‘heard’: trucks bumping
over the familiar pothole, Saturday night
drunks cursing their mates, distant
screams – ‘watched,’ then, minding
my own business. For several years
I watched. For several years
                                                   he paced.
 
My interest mostly inward-turning,
I wondered idly (wildly) if he was
a prisoner in that square green room
between those blinded windows and
a darkened archway leading… elsewhere?
           The sun rising, the glass became opaque.
           Is madness just a night profession?
           Was he yet awake? Could it be his size,
           the massive shoulders, the great, sagging
           head, my own insomniac fancies
           which lent a strange expression?
 
Then one night, casually staring
at my cigarette, watching it glow,
behind closed windows –
           ‘Please don’t look at me!’
           ---I saw his fist
           pressed against the pane.
There were a hundred windows facing his.
How many eyes, looking up from books,
glance at the street? Was it my vacant
stare he caught? Shaken,
I sidled through the dimness,
only my fingers visible, drawing
                                                   the shades.
 
Then, any night I saw him there,
he lifted one hand, silently
– whether to wave or threaten
I could not tell. Each time
I turned, oddly frightened: Was it me,
my oblong room, painted red,
my treasured texts his vision leapt at,
all my thoughts strewn across
                                                   an unmade bed?
 
Or had we, neighbours in the stillborn night
– he pacing, shaking his fist (or waving);
I, passive and restless as a housebound dog
trembling behind a half-drawn shade – at last
vaulted the abyss, climbed the two stories
of our lives, and broken into each other’s
                                                   madness?
 

Leah Fritz

published in internet magazine The Bow Wow Shop, (ed. Michael Glover)

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