The Book Club Devotee
by Isabella David McCaffrey
We read the Pisan Cantos LXXIV-LXXXIV
aloud between surplus paper napkins and
folding metal chairs, squeezed into a corner
like some 12-step poetry group.
A circle of frail human beings
with bad haircuts and pilled sweaters,
taking turns with each stanza diffidently as if
on the verge of composing a love sonnet or
confessing to lifelong sins of flesh and spirit.
Deconstructing passages of sadistic
opaque splendor, speaking in tongues
about fallen heroes, skipping the Chinese
altogether but admiring on the page the symbols
as exquisite as Tanagra figurines.
“J’ai eu pitié des autres.”
An old man reads, his Bronx
accent laying the vowels like underground subway
tracks deep inside his nostrils, sprouting white hair
and syllables.
He pushes his glasses up a beautifully bulbous nose,
pausing to squint:
“Probablement pas assez.”
No, never enough pity.
I’m thinking of Pound, mad and lonely and nostalgic.
I’m thinking of myself back then, young and loving poetry alone,
I’m thinking of the doomed days of the Poetry Club.
I’m thinking of the man reading French, never understanding a word
in the basement of the Bowery Poetry Club,
now replaced by another burlesque joint—
how the hip do inherit the Earth! And like locusts
will end by devouring us all.
Gyroscope Review 3! 6