Anthony Seidman
CROSSINGS
Like dust smoking over a dirt road Chihuahua town, as the bus slows down at the stop,
letting on a woman with pointed breasts, and black hair streaked blue with sun;
like the concrete arches raising the Hollywood Freeway alongside palm trees shaking in
Richters, the shrub-dun hills dotted with houses the glaze of bubblegum, and the sea miles away;
like a car starting in the dead of night;
like the beggar’s plucked guitar string, and his voice that shatters the crystal buttons
holding the moon’s dress in one piece;
like the oil drenched finger of silence sealing these syllables;
there is always a bridge
connecting the pitch of an egg cracked with a nail being hammered,
the barren woman with the flooded arroyo,
the hot coffee sipped in a diner with the black spit of the vinegarroon,
there is always a bridge, there is always a bridge, as the border between north and south is pliable
like water.
Anthony Seidman's poetry and translations have recently appeared in Caesura, Poetry International, New American Writing, The Bitter Oleander, among other journals. His latest collection of poetry is entitled Cosmic Weather, and it's available from Spuyten Duyvil at www.spuytenduyvil.net/cosmic-weather