WILLIAM DORESKI - POEMS

William Doreski has published three critical studies and several collections of poetry. His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in many print and online journals. He has taught writing and literature at Emerson, Goddard, Boston University, and Keene State College. His most recent book is A Black River, A Dark Fall. 

A Sinkhole at the Landfill
​

Hosing out the garbage pail,
I step into a sinkhole
thigh-deep, toothed and grinning.
Recycling center employees
rush over to rescue me
from my baroque situation but
you laugh so roughly you shake
roosting vultures from their perch.

The whole area feels queasy.
The tin-roofed sheds are quaking
as the ground slowly liquefies.
A half-dozen parked vehicles
slough hub-deep in sandy mush.
Dogs nose about, low and slinking,
fearful but too curious to run.

Surrounded by stark realists
in official government shirts,
I hoist myself with some help
onto slightly more solid ground.
The manager admits that rain
has inspired a bit of mud but
hardly deep enough to swallow
trucks, people, or structures.

But you suggest we escape 
before the facility sags 
into churning murk and muddle.
You point to the vultures circling
with all of their hungers aroused.
The blackest of punctuation,
they peer down at us with pin-eyes
sharp enough to see the future.

With a shrug of paid indifference,
the realists return to work. We creep
into our car and start the engine,
and the sodden landscape sighs,
the sinkhole patched by choking it
with a shovelful of gravel
as gray as a human brain. 

​

Kakegawa
​

We’ve crossed so many arched bridges 
braced by spindly pilings. They all
seem too dramatic to span
those lazy tidal rivers
no sailboats try to navigate.

Windy today. Everyone walking
west leans into the draft. Those
with the weather at their backs
slog along unconcerned, one fellow
even holding a fan, ready
to concoct his own private breeze
should the natural one desist.

There’s Mount Akiba sporting
its famous shrine. But you’re eyeing
the kite some wag has lofted,
a disc of paper with a long tail.
And look, there’s another, chasing
itself, loose and lost in the sky.

​

The Last Wood Thrush
​

The last wood thrush reproaches me. What have I done? The recent ice age seems a monument to good sense. The water shortage in India troubles me. Facts morph into farts. Politicians stomp the graveyards flatter than I would have thought possible. While you clean the litter boxes, I deploy my astral self to tour the world. Everything is wanting. Syria coughs up gouts of toxic smoke. Saudi Arabia denies that women exist. Russia fusses over the devalued ruble. China smirks in its cushion of ancient poetry. Japan absorbs repeated tsunamis without blinking. Rio strangles a thousand gangsters and shovels their bodies into the harbor. I note these local effects without letting them affect me. The dazzle of laminated distances furthers my lack of career. I regret the deaths of friends, but the space they occupied has resold for a premium price. Everyone is better off now. Even the proletariat plies the museums of France and Italy. Unimpressed, the wood thrush reminds me that song is everything, the silence only a place without a name.

Fukuroi
​

A roadside teahouse to refresh you. Only a flimsy straw hut, it nonetheless tempts with steamy aromas and a tree for shade as you sit and savor the moment. The gray bird perched on the sign sings a familiar mating song, one to which you’ve often responded. That huge copper teapot intrigues you. In our own era, two hundred years later, this will be a valuable antique. To the woman heating the tea it embodies her economic personhood. A pair of black kimonos dulls the scene, but the lone porter in plaid poking at something with chopsticks looks thoughtful rather than glum. You’re perhaps halfway to Kyoto, so enjoy your tea and congratulate yourself on coming so far on foot.

​

From the Universal Crime Log
​

A shopping cart flopped in shallows.
Sunlight quickens the water
in shades of brass and sky. Someone

piloted this contraption to crash
in the saddest posture, then ran
to cuddle with his fellow drunks

and boast about his pointless crime.
I could rescue the cart but doubt
it belongs to any nearby store.

I could demand the police look into
“conduct after an accident,”
but they’d probably arrest me

for being the first on the scene.
The river shudders along slowly
feeling its way to the sea where

criminal acts loom much larger
and involve seagulls and barely
decent swimwear, plastic trash

and untreated sewage, long black
oil tankers likely to run aground
and spill their viscous cargo.

I thrust a hand in the current
and feel it tug so slightly
its weakness almost makes me cry.

The shopping cart hasn’t lain here
for more than a week. Maybe
I could rescue and claim it,

load my favorite possessions,
wander around town all day
among the other godless people

and sleep under overhangs
while thunderstorms crash and stars
fall into the river, burning holes   

about as big as a finger.
No, I couldn’t sustain that pose.
Better leave drowned objects lie--

the river’s secret imperative
not for me to textualize
or anyone else to deny.

​