I remember sleeping with the Ballad for Metka
Krasovec over my head for years in Florida, white
cover with people crowded together
and their ghosts above their black print selves,
pink too like shells, book small enough
to hold comfortably in a hand,
the ballad singing over my head all night
long, while I slept close to the floor, train
shaking as if trying to rouse me.
I remember shaking Tomaz Salamun’s
hand in St. Marks, I’d asked strangers
in the dark, where is St. Mark’s, laughing
because they’d been to St. Mark’s
or wanted to go but couldn’t,
or we asked strangers on the street
where is Tomaz Salamun
reading, and the strangers were poets
or lovers of poetry, and pointed us
toward St. Marks, their arms raised
like parentheses, like waves, but it was
almost over, and this was clear when we
arrived, and everyone stood in one of many
little circles, a large medieval door
shut. It was over. Dejected,
I climbed stairs to another floor,
down a hall, a restroom where I
stood in front of the glass examining
my face, my newly shorn
hair, and Teresa ran in, Hurry,
Hurry, she cried. Simen is holding
Tomaz Salamun hostage downstairs.
Simen said he can’t leave until
he meets you. She loves you, Simen said
to Tomaz Salamun, as if this would convince
him to stay until I ran out the bathroom door,
down the stairs, into the vast hall
to find Simen from Sweden
by way of Norway who doesn’t even like
people all that much, holding Tomaz
Salamun hostage for me because
I’d said I loved him. Like the cold
spark in a violet on a winter sill,
alive and unexpected. I remember
my hand in Tomaz Salamun’s, like a hand but
also like bread rising around
my hand, warm, tremendously
comforting, Who are you,
he asked, who are you?
