First

By KEITH LEONARD

 

I fell in love and became        like those men in Plato’s Republic
who heard music for the first time        and began singing,
and sang beyond reason,         beyond dinner, beyond sleep,
and even died without noticing it,      without wavering.

Thank you for ferocity,           for our being beyond reason,           
for the incendiary marvel of us.          It was a gift,
even if, after love,                      I became a wooden chair
with its cane seat broken through;        something someone might          
place at the edge of their driveway      and tape a handwritten sign to it
saying free or please take me.           

Thank you. Someone always believes            they can make use. 
The flower-printed sofas,       the particle-board desks—          
they’re all taken by the evening commute,     even in a town
thinned out by rain,                 even on a sidewalk barely visible
beneath a weak-bulbed light.

 

[Purchase Issue 21 here.]

 

Keith Leonard is the author of the poetry collection Ramshackle Ode. His poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in New England Review, Ploughshares, and The Believer.

First

Related Posts

Mantra 5

KRIKOR BELEDIAN
from channel to channel / the lengthening beauty of shadows that float and bow down / and suck at the stones and planks / of the damp, bitter fog / of loneliness, / stone horses let loose their golden neighs / and the waters transform to / stained glass

Book cover of Concerning the Angels by Rafael Alberti

January 2025 Poetry Feature #2: Rafael Alberti in Translation

RAFAEL ALBERTI
Who are you, tell us, who do not remember you / from earth or from heaven? // Your shadow—tell us—is from what space? / What light, say it, has reached / into our realm? // Where do you come from, tell us, / shadow without words, / that we don’t remember you?

The Old Current Book Cover

January 2025 Poetry Feature #1: Brad Leithauser

BRAD LEITHAUSER
I’m twenty-seven, maybe too old to be / Upended by this, the manifold / Foreignness of it all, the fulfilling / Queer grandeur of it all, // But we each come into ourselves / As each can, in our own / Unmetered time (our own sweet way), / And for me this day’s more thrilling