“All this in a castle of air, the floating world of the assimilated…” – Adrienne Rich, “Sources”
Two old cities
on the open sea:
The chisel of departure
the autumn gap
To be oblique or artful
about this: Crossing
the threshold I
go on believing
The plains: Instructions
from the time of war
for a joyous period
of mourning
The contorted hand
in the small chest:
a talisman
ill-matched to the fields
Pig meant once unclean:
The factories
homogenized
rendering
Now and then he sits in the garden
with the sound of grace:
The years measured
in empty casks
To simply care
for others: Insufficient
ceremony with desert
lemon palm leaf open-air dwelling
What is difficult:
The citizen cries
in the prison he built
with his own gold
Up from underneath
the floating castle:
Night-sky gleams wet
with contract ink
The ancestor’s schemes
for the present moment:
Sparrows that shatter
the stomach’s peace

Benjamin J. Brezner received his MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University, where he received the 2017 Outstanding Graduate Student Award and edited poetry for Stillhouse Press. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Vallum, The Dalhousie Review, Whiskey Island, burntdistrict, and DistrictLit, among others, and has been featured on The Inner Loop podcast. He recently moved from Washington, DC to Toronto, ON, where he lives with his wife, cats and a beautiful newborn baby.