KEITH NEWTON
MATERIALIZATION IN A BLACK SEA
The piers tense with crossbreeds
of leaded ice, riding in,
the channels of the harbor shut.
The prodigious certainties
of the harbor authorize
my crossing, my removal.
A jealous father destroys
his rivals, like the chess master
after school polishing off
his students with a queen handicap,
calling his daughter down
from sunbathing on the black roof
to babysit across the tenement hall.
Why should I be denied
the authority of the harbor
when the babysitter’s yellow panties
shake loose from the sheets
as the bed is stripped?
I should have known
how a jealous father decides
who stays and who goes, who returns.
Exiled from a black sea,
big strangers, speaking a strange language,
knocking at doors.
Trenched cables spool out
as the arms of the cranes
project over the water
the shadow of their turning
slowly through the air.
I’m going to forget
whose father it was
who wanted a prodigy.