John Timpane is the former Books Editor and Theater Critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer. His work has appeared in, among other places, Sequoia, Apiary, Cleaver, Painted Bride Quarterly, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Vocabula Review, Tiferet, and in two chapbooks, Burning Bush (Windsor, Ontario: Judith Fitzgerald, 2010) and Buck in the Piano Room (Philadelphia: Moonstone, 2023). He is currently working on a second edition of Poetry for Dummies, which he coauthored in 2000. It is scheduled to come out in 2026. He lives in New Jersey.
Poetry by John
[Sijo]
Cruel only once, she, alone, shouted, “You, gone so long, are
Gone from me.” She walked to my house to say, “You, not the man
I loved.” Hair, then forehead, she – eyes, nostrils, lips – surfaced.
.
In this hospital, this battlefield, I, nurse, help the harried
Physician, take the hand as the wounded fade in this place,
This bed, this face, the evening carer whose hand holds mine.
.
Layer after layer, lie by lie, lost job, job interview,
Flight to Arizona, new job, he’ll call when he’s
Settled, whole other wife, life, don’t wait for him to come back.
.
In an echoing warehouse, out of a hill of fragments,
They reverse the explosion, piece together the airliner,
The names, the remainders, never the lives: in a smaller pile
Glasses, credit cards, shoes, comb, necklaces, dentures, doll.
Death is here but does not make everything garbage.
God is here but does not make everything all right.
.
Vs of voices sweep the midnight. A cold fox cries. Grizzled,
Back again, a lurid sliver of October moon tilts
As if night itself half-opened its tiger eye. I am
Sorry if I ever hurt anyone. I hope I hate
No one, nothing. May I grow old to the end, somehow
Nearing grace as the wild fields hemorrhage loosestrife.
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