The left-handed fascinate me—
I call them the mirror folk—
but I’m still not sure if their otherness is real
or just perceived, like my reflection
blurred by gauche epigraphs
and recherché humility.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Category: English poetry
Spin doctor’s heaven
I bit a tomato—
courtesy of the Columbian exchange—
as if it were a Belle de Boskoop
while staring at the map of the patch across the pond,
wondering what shaped the Usonian Goldilocks syndrome,
because when you split a hair, you reveal its structure;
when you spin it, you can make it look prettier,
but you will never go beyond cosmetics.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
The banks
I live by the river yet never walk its banks.
Not that they’d miss me particularly—
after all, I would just be another pair of soles
trampling on their peace between the tides.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
A graduate at the site of the Theory Explosion
Baking bread is all about temperature—
set it too low and you’ll end up with a dry brick,
but too high and the crust will burn,
leaving the dough uncooked inside.
But you’ve got to be at least thermo-literate
to land a baker’s job, and that’s a fact, not an opinion—
you still remember what that is, don’t you?
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
The turkey’s vote
It was such a fine idea—while it lasted—
that even though it barely outlived the remex
dipped in oak gall ink to etch the signatures,
we go on perpetuating it ad infinitum—
like turkeys drawn by ‘something borrowed,
something blue’.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
If I were a landlady
My little shabby B-and-B
only ever had one guest: me,
and despite the everlasting muss,
it wasn’t all that inconvenient—
at least I got used to the ins
and outs of its constitution.
Now imagine having a lodger
for a full nine months—
is that what they call
shared management?
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
A space filler
What was the last thing you remember
before you died? I was signing my book,
but I can’t recall if it was as MacCallus
or Modzelewski. It doesn’t matter—
they’re both equally ridiculous—
just like signing a book
I never published.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
A matter of taste
Some words sit better with a blackboard,
like a line delivered offhand by an old stager,
even if tinged with a hint of limestone scent
and prolonged storage, but you could have tried
slightly more sophisticated writing implements
for the sudden ‘I’m leaving’.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Fictility
A French and an American student
meet on a train to Vienna and fall in love
sounds oddly familiar, like a pitch
for a romcom scribbled on a napkin
in one of Tinseltown’s shabby bars
that somehow turned into an epic trilogy,
and your only regret is that you were
neither the scribbler nor the lover,
but at least you’re holding on to something
real.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
hidden pilcrow 