by Leo YankevichPublished: April 5, 2008
You turn your thoughts away from your own yard,
grandchildren skipping rope and tossing balls.
The bell rings and you’re running down the halls
of the old school past frog-faced Mrs. Sward
until you reach a desk, a wobbly one
with “Johnny loves Annette” engraved on it.
You look out of the window at the lit
blast furnaces, the molten morning sun
that was your immigrant pop’s bread and butter.
His heavy accent lingers in your mind,
his calloused fingers tousling teenage hair.
A while ago you left him in the stutter
of half goodbye. And now you look behind
inside a school that is no longer there.
About the Author
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Leo Yankevich’s latest books are
The Last Silesian (The Mandrake Press, 2005) and
Tikkun Olam & Other Poems (The New Formalist Press, 2008). His poems have appeared in
Amelia, American Jones Building & Maintenance, Artword Quarterly, Beauty for Ashes Poetry Review, Blue Unicorn, Candelabrum, Cedar Hill Review, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, CounterPunch, Disquieting Muses, Edge City Review, Electric Acorn, Envoi, FutureCycle Poetry, Harpstrings, Iambs & Trochees, Iota, Ironwood, Kimera, Lite: Baltimore's Literary Newspaper, Lucid Rhythms, Mr. Cogito, New Hope International, Nostoc, Parnassus Literary Journal, Pennine Platform, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Poetry Nottingham, Psychopoetica, Raintown Review, Riverrun, Romantics Quarterly, Ship of Fools, Snakeskin, Sonnet Scroll, Staple, Sulphur River Literary Review, Tennessee Quarterly, The Barefoot Muse, The Chimaera, The East River Review, The Eclectic Muse, The Flea, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, The London Magazine, The MacGuffin, The Monongahela Review, The Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Shit Creek Review, thehypertexts.com, The Pennsylvania Review, The Sarmatian Review, The Tennessee Review, Tucumcari Literary Review, Trinacria, Visions International, Weyfarers, Whelks Walk Review, Windsor Review, inter alia. He is editor of
The New Formalist. More of his work can be found at
Leo Yankevich.com.
