He didn’t always have the beard. Before his bushy locks
\nthere was a boy’s smooth face. His lovers would smile
\n(as did he) when they brought a milkmaid’s hand to his cheek.
\nAs his stubble grew, his lovers diminished. When only one was left
\nthey married. Though he trusted her love, he would never shave
\nhis face again. In part a challenge, in part gratitude.<\/p>\n
Like Bach, he was fierce in a fist fight. On a night soon after
\nhis arrival in London, he leveled three coal-workers
\nover a disputed wager at darts. Once they discovered the identity
\nof their opponent, the three approached him late one night as he left
\nOxford Library. They wept over their cheating him. He glared, searched
\neach man’s eyes before turning to the direction of his home.<\/p>\n
The day he raised the dead, the sun shone fire as he studied stevedores
\nextracting a ship’s load with a new machine. Well into their work
\na young man was crushed under a crate of china marked “Fragile.”
\nMarx, still young, ran to the docks. But the act was quick,
\nand for a long time he watched, not knowing what to do,
\nas the men emptied the crate. Then, with the others,
\nhe carried the dead young man to his people.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ludwig’s Sleight of Hand<\/strong><\/p>\n When I was five my Uncle Ludwig would itself, a lack of grace to be the soul In awe I saw that headless nub and thought its tip to enchantment. It must have been <\/p>\n Decay Products<\/strong><\/p>\n A thick Pennsylvania August. I was seven, One stepped out and began pissing on the mailbox. and I’ll show you.” “I’ll be right down,” he called down the driveway. The drunk again danced pants loose, a whimper escaping him. As they sped away of order into an idea of discord. Example: something in me wants to be him for that moment: to hold the way certain elements can exist in perfect situations <\/p>\n After Reading Tanikawa’s Notes from ‘Starvation’<\/strong><\/p>\n A cycle of poems on starvation Do we expect too much from our words to put so many terrible things <\/p>\n The day he raised the dead, the sun shone fire…<\/p>\n By Steven Breyak<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\npull his thumb off his hand and put it back.
\nWithin two shows I got to know his trick
\nwas in the clumsy way his hand had held <\/p>\n
\nof his show when a buzz saw stole his thumb
\nover stray thoughts and a knot. The clean trim
\nthrough clay skin worked from this hack bit a spell.<\/p>\n
\nhe had reached the pinnacle of his act,
\nstudied with Austrian masters secret
\nhand gestures to make his knuckle forfeit<\/p>\n
\nstashed in a drawer or slipped behind my ear
\nwhere it waited for his signal to reappear,
\nan impossible snap of the fingers when
\nhis young audience had all but lost hope. <\/p>\n
\npicking strawberries with my mom and dad when
\nthree drunks pulled in and idled a car on our front yard. <\/p>\n
\nWhen my dad yelled, “What the hell,” the guy shook
\nhis balls and said, “Why don’t you come down <\/p>\n
\nfrom the porch as he led my mom and me inside.
\nHe held the forty-four behind his back as he walked <\/p>\n
\nhis dick in the burning air, laughing until the gun barrel
\nhit the side of his head. He fell back into the car, <\/p>\n
\nmy dad fired three shots into their wake. Unscathed,
\nthey drove through me shattering only an idea <\/p>\n
\nI know I should hate my father–risking death,
\nprison, us over pride–but some<\/p>\n
\nthat gun to some fool and his mistake; to shed love
\nin defense of love; to be right <\/p>\n
\nfor only pieces of a second.<\/p>\n
\nwill not even feed the guy who skipped breakfast.
\nAnd it certainly won’t keep grocery stores
\nfrom throwing away day-old bread. Poems couldn’t
\nprevent the A-bomb. Poems were around in plenty
\nduring the Inquisition. All we have left of Homer
\nare his beautiful descriptions of destruction.<\/p>\n
\ninto them and on paper? Maybe making a college student cry
\nis enough. Maybe softening one heart is a good start for this old
\nbeast dying in the corner. God knows it will never pay for all I owe.<\/p>\n![\"steven-breyak1\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/steven-breyak1.jpg\")
\nABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong>
\nSteven Breyak<\/strong>‘s poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Gargoyle, 42opus, Poets and Artists and in other journals on the Net and on paper. His work has been chosen for Thieves Jargon’s Editor’s Picks and Flying Guillotine’s Apocalypse Anthology. He lives in Japan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"steven-breyak3\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/steven-breyak3-150x150.jpg\")
He didn’t always have the beard. Before his bushy locks
\nthere was a boy’s smooth face…
\nLike Bach, he was fierce in a fist fight. On a night soon after
\nhis arrival in London, he leveled three coal-workers
\nover a disputed wager at darts. Once they discovered the identity
\nof their opponent, the three approached him late one night as he left
\nOxford Library. They wept over their cheating him. He glared, searched
\neach man’s eyes before turning to the direction of his home.<\/p>\n