ALEX DIMITROV

Alex Dimitrov is an MFA student in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College.
He is the recipient of a Cowden Memorial Fellowship from the Hopwood
Awards at the University of Michigan where he studied with Anne Carson
and Thylias Moss. His poetry has appeared in The Oleander Review, The
Columbia Review, and Red Owl Magazine among others. Born in Sofia,
Bulgaria, he currently lives in New York City.

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Unlocked

First the mirrors fell,
four asymmetric pieces to the floor.

I picked them up, hung new ones
you said, we look unfamiliar.

Then rushing in one day, my books in hand
this door frame snapped.

The wood was hard to cut and left the house
unlocked. Soon every neighbor's glance found in.

I spent the year repairing and replacing things.
The fragile bulb, a water leak so soft

we slept right next to it.
The phone rang loud and constantly,

it was these servicemen that came and left.
What did they do and how?






In America, 1993

When I returned to my mother that summer
she said, pulling me toward her
it is nice to now think of you as in the other room.

Most of the time I wasn't.

On work days she insisted I go with her
wait in the car with all doors locked
and listen for the steel clicks of her heels to find me.

This was her fear and her salvation.

At night before my father came
she'd catch me in the yard
counting off night flights, keeping tally.

The large machines sped over
loud and without grace.
Each one I pointed to the nearest airport.

And those which headed east
toward New York or some other city –
they made it.

The rest crashed fast and suddenly in someone else's yard.






Castration

I perform as the star of a surgery
where the doctors sever my tongue
and collapse my lungs last –
a dream I have every night like a show.

Somewhere in the middle organs are taken out and put in.
I ask but am not told what's planted,
and like The Gross Clinic of Eakins
little is shown.

The men appear distant,
their white skin has reddened.
Mother waits cast aside in a corner, eyes covered
and prays they don't hand her the knife.






The Rescue

Our plane's fleeting hum
like a lost childhood prayer,
wakes me in the night somewhere over the ocean.

Next to me your seat is empty
and the ocean outside is dark.
At this hour it feels invisible, needs trusting.

The pilot is silent
and so are his passengers.
You float, a lone buoy down the faintly lit aisle.

I try closing my eyes but how can I sleep again?
I want to see your face,
the shape it will take when you recognize mine

among all these strange sleepers.
My familiar lips which now whisper to yours,
no one is looking.

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