May 2017
Robert Wexelblatt
wexelblatt@verizon.net
I live near Boston and teach philosophy at Boston University.  Besides academic pieces, I write fiction when I’m up to it and poems when I can’t help it.  I use a fountain pen—my link to tradition—and write to music.  I’ve published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals.  My most recent book is Heiberg’s Twitch. 
​
If I’ve Told You Once


Don’t stick your finger in there.
People won’t like you if you brag.
Sit there until you finish your peas.

But the socket’s so alluring and
it was my first time down the slide.
As for the squishy peas—they’re not mine.

Civilization batters down the gates
with the voice of a mother, sets up
its occupying garrison, settles in

until the occupier becomes not
just another citizen but the mayor.
Yet sometimes a child recalls, rebels,

convenes a meeting, informs the voters
their mayor’s an interloper whose
alien rules can justly be ignored.

But no, they say, he’s one of us.
But no, they say, there would be guilt.
You’re just a kid, they say. Grow up.






What Do You Need?
Frei aber einsam
motto of Joseph Joachim

Tied together by wanting, we’ve
spread from comet-sown puddles,
from constellations banal and bright.
No sin in loving them, if you like.

The half-empty pitcher anxiously
calls to the spigot for something
to fill its earthen self—water,
water the way Bedouins see water.

What is sufficient to itself is
a threat to commerce, a bad example:
the hermit, the forest, the egg.

Night over Detroit. We banked low.
I could see a streetlamp and one solitary
figure, walking freely into the light.





Was Sonnet


The flight from Budapest was
Traffic wasn’t bad; it was
Thursday’s weather forecast was
The pure, the vital thing was

She drew one card and it was
Her secret recipe was
She knew him for what he was
He knew exactly what she was

It felt so good that it was
It hurt too much, so it was
She ceased to be what she was
Was she is or already was

The final diagnosis was
What is turns into what was
​  “What Do You Need?” first appeared in Hiram Poetry Review
“Was Sonnet” first appeared in decomP
© 2017 Robert Wexelblatt
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