Six Poems by Dana Delibovi

 

Ashamed Before the Animals

 

For Fern Resmovits

 

When the original couple sinned

and draped themselves in leaves,

it was odd: No other people

Could see them, because

they hadn’t reproduced.

They hid their newly wicked

nudity from chipmunks,

turtles, elephants, and all the

naked animals the man had named.

Ashamed before the animals,

who didn’t care at all, they stood

in daylight full of eyes, considering

what it meant to till the soil

for food—awful compared to

God’s delicious handouts.

Experiments would one day show

that what they hid in foliage

could generate some farmhands,

but not yet. A weird wind howled

a strange sun burned. Dying

hadn’t dawned on them,

but they guessed that God

had much in store—the first

human sense of leaving the party,

to go forth with the liquor

wearing off, to spawn a thousand

their generations, ever shy

to undress before their dogs.

 

The Finality of Quadrilaterals

 

In this center-hall colonial

Mausoleum of language,

Only the dog’s nails on

Linoleum break the silence.

The square of my desk

Requests the eulogy that every

Poem slips between its lines.

Nine green glass frogs

And my ceramic hummingbird

Carry me along. I straighten

Dry rectangles of paper, gather

Tools to disinter some words.

My ancient pencil box closes

With an unnerving clack.

The Soft Pop of an Acorn Underfoot

 

Banished

in the circle

delimited by the streetlight

—I had shamed myself.

 

An imperfect dinner,

remnants glistening

down the drain,

broke the spell

 

cast by high-stretching

oaks that winter

night, when black

denuded limbs

 

touched cloud-wings

near the moon and

Jupiter

shining through.

 

Into the dark,

I came for comfort,

a womb, a leaf-

packed nest,

 

my footfall

disturbing one small

impossible seed

of bigger life.

 

Descartes Dreams Up “Cogito ergo Sum”

 

Dirty and well-fed, in his billowed white dressing gown,

he contemplates a Beaujolais nouveau in winter.

 

As the legs of the wine swirl the glass in candlelight,

he dips a flamboyant quill in ink, and soon he pours

 

the lines, grids, numbers, and parabolas

adolescents in fluorescent rooms will one day curse.

 

But even in mathematical certainty, he doubts

his smoke-stained rooms, his bottle, and his hand,

 

potential machinations of a demon sprite,

sworn to trick the unsuspecting mind. He takes

 

another swing, feels the warmth, and writes “I drink,

therefore I am,” but edits, and makes the world anew.

 

Glass Doors

 

Through glass doors I see

Rain on red leaves,

Turning so late in the year.

The muted rituals

Of an oak-leaf hydrangea

Manifest in scarlet,

While roses across the yard

Shrivel to themselves. Silence—

Except the odd squeak of a pipe

—Settles on my living room.

Bark and branch, the world outside

Dies speechless—for it is

Brave.

 

Physics

 

Snow falls in the bitter air.

The house will not warm;

It remains stubborn

In its refusal. The walls, the

Space they hold, the knobs

Of every drawer insist on

Solidarity with winter.

All physical things unite

In resistance to my desires,

Including the pen in my hand.

Dana Delibovi is a poet, essayist, and translator. She recently published a collection of translations and critical essays, Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila (Monkfish, 2024). Delibovi’s work has appeared in After the Art, Apple Valley Review, Ballast, Ekstasis, Noon, Psaltery & Lyre, Salamander, and many other journals. She is a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee, a 2020 Best American Essays notable essayist, a 2024 Best of the Net nominee, and co-winner of the 2023 Hueston Woods Poetry Contest. Delibovi is consulting poetry editor at the literary e-zine Cable Street. 

(Social media, if needed: @danadelibovi.bsky.social)

Dana Delibovi
Consulting Poetry Editor, Cable Street
Dana’s book: Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila—available here