Andrew Demcak: Three Poems

The Birthday Party | Black Valentine | The Living Donor

The Birthday Party

(for Anne Sexton)

The gift, wanted or needed, a mortal
wound in this tiresome threshold. Needless

to say, candles burn out. Those invited
are long gone. This girl would be a woman

soaked through, now a lily equally
departed. Who could predict ten minutes

to sift her grave, everything made sugar,
her recipe for asphyxiation?

One pale hand waving limply to the world,
an accurate soothsayer, all frosted

white. Then the thrill of a present undone,
the coffin raised like a layer cake.

Black Valentine

(for Anais Nin)

Your nails brushed red as a widow's blood
for her — this mustachioed lesbian —

a swastika armband like a Dresden
doll. Increasingly you were costumed.

This permanent stain — your journal entry.
Awaiting her hand — the punishing cane —

both exciting and repellent — making
you cum like a sister. Housed by her

androgynous touch — darkly debonair—
your sex quivering its morality.

Rhythms of women caught on the stairwell.
O your tender coach — your suicide knot.

The Living Donor

You'll turn to see the surgeon — awaiting
his scalpel to drift like a leaf from oak

meadows, trailing almost forty miles,
off the Sierras. Your kidney's twin will

fly, an osprey come over the lowlands,
rushing up damp slopes. How he will enter

into you — entering between the grass
and the riverbed, where horses washed

unbridled. The recipient pausing
in lupine hospital scrubs. His river

swaying like mortality, a fresh life
emerging, head first, from zigzagging fish.

Poet's Biography:

Andrew Demcak has an MFA in English/Creative Writing from St. Mary's College in Moraga, CA, where he studied with Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Michael Palmer, and others; he is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. His work has been published and/or anthologized in Pearl, Plainsongs, The Chiron Review, The Wisconsin Review, The Pikeville Review, The Coal City Review, Skidrow Penthouse, and others.