Ira Sadoff Poems

The shaft of narrative peers down.
The soul's a petrified fleck of partridge this October.
Mud-spattered, it thinks it's brush, it thinks
...

The rabbi doesn't say she was sly and peevish,
fragile and voracious, disheveled, voiceless and useless,
at the end of her very long rope. He never sat beside her
...

When I came back, he was gone.
My mother was in the bathroom
crying, my sister in her crib
...

I've been blessed
with a few gusts of wind,
a few loves
...

It is a Sunday afternoon on the Grand Canal. We are watching the sailboats trying to sail along without wind. Small rowboats are making their incisions on the water, only to have the wounds seal up again soon after they pass.
...

A few surprising turns follow us everywhere.
I was shopping for something to replace
what I once felt. Weren't there buildings there
...

Once I could say
my loyal friend, the house wren.
...

I sniff after the sparrow and the spaniel, flitting around,
barking, digging up the dirt: how could I not be
at one with them? But I'm a spendthrift too, rummaging about
...

My first roses brought me to my senses.
All my furies, I launched them like paper boats
in the algaed pond behind my house.
...

It's time to put the aside the old resentments; lies,
machinations, the paranoia, bugs in telephones,
the body bags, secret bombings, his sweaty upper lip,
...