The September Editor's Pick Poet is

Norbert Hirschhorn

Please feel free to email Norbert at:

bertzpoet@yahoo.com

AMERICAN GOTHIC

on the porch, their half-breed
dog with yellow teeth suddenly
alert as I hitchhiked rural Iowa
to visit a woman who wouldn’t have me.
If I waved, they would have slackened
the leash.  If I called out,
I’d be eaten.

MONASTERY OF THE MOON

Bone-white incense
glacial aroma of absence
chants strangled in the throat

Rising earth-light
blue angelic innocence

On the dark-side
the mad the maligned
the lost the possessed 

THE LION AND THE STORK

King Lion was too greedy.
He scarfed the antelope carcass and a
leg bone got caught in his throat.
Help! Help! I’m choking. Reward! Reward!
Animals gathered, watching, hyenas smiling,
when along trod a Marabou Stork –
scabby, pendulous gullet, a filthy
practice of shitting on its toes.
He inserted his bill into the lion’s maw
to retrieve the bone. King Lion,
relieved, roared his air shattering roar,
frightening everyone away…
Sire, Stork stood its ground, what is
my reward?
Reward? Reward?  You
survived my jaws. Sod off.

IN AN ALABASTER ROOM
(a paradelle) *

It’s always about loss.
It’s always about loss.
Each minute peeling away.
Each minute peeling away.
About loss, it’s peeling
away each minute, always.

Choking on dust.
Choking on dust.
Too late, already gone.
Too late, already gone.
Dust, choking, gone on,
already too late.

Two mirrors face to face.
Two mirrors face to face
in an alabaster room,
in an alabaster room.
Mirrors face in, face to,
an alabaster in Room Two.

Peeling face on mirrors’
dust, its loss already a way
too late. Each minute an
alabaster, choking in
Room Two. Gone. Always.
About face!

* Note: The ‘paradelle’ originated as a faux form invented by US poet Billy Collins in a parody of fixed forms like the villanelle. It, however, has taken on its own life, even spawning an anthology by well-known poets (The Paradelle. Edited by Theresa Welford. Los Angeles: Red Hen Press 2006).  As described by Collins, the ‘paradelle’ demands “four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines…must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only these words.”

Norbert Hirschhorn is a physician specializing in international public health, commended in 1993 by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health Hero.” He now lives in London and Beirut. 

Norbert received a Master's in Fine Arts degree from Vermont College in 1994.  His poems have been published in over three dozen journals, five anthologies, four pamphlets (the most recent: The Terrible Crystal, from Hearing Eye, London, March 2008), and two full collections: A Cracked River, Slow Dancer Press, London, 1999, and Mourning in the Presence of a Corpse, Dar al-Jadeed, Lebanon, May 2008.  A third collection, Night-Time Shadows, is out to publishers.  Please feel free to visit Norbert's website at www.bertzpoet.com.