Good night, Marcus. Blow out the light
and close your book. Where Ursa runs
the stars’ alarm now fills the night.
Heaven speaks to us in tongues,
a barbarian’s fear-stricken shriek
your Latin cannot understand.
Eternal terror, dark and bleak,
reigns over our frail mortal land. (more…)
Author: Leo Yankevich
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Let us go to the station
to marvel at the marble
sprayed with graffiti.Let us take a ghost train,
jump cargos to Chicago,
with shiny fin-tailed cars. -
July 19, 2017 Leo Yankevich
Wardrobe Restoration
The art nouveau oak moulding, chipped and cracked,
barely hanging from a rusty nail,
begs restoration. Klimt’s young maids untacked,
1910 doors, the flailing clothing rail,fin de siècle mirror, long have lacked
a master’s living hand. In the hot stale
air of the cluttered loft its owner packed
and fled, dust lies decades deep in a pail. (more…) -
The silverfish climb walls
and crawl the faded floors;
eat peeled wallpaper, balls
of lint in broken drawers;across veneer, find pairs
of thick and chipped wenge legs,
art deco chaise lounge chairs,
upholstery now in rags. (more…) -
The valley sinks into the mist;
the yellow ring of the horizon
eclipses the cornea of the sun;
the ridge blooms purple on my wrist,fading, inimical and black.
The earth exhales into the dusk,
frost forming in the shaded husk
of afterglows. My wine and sack -
March 9, 2017 Leo Yankevich
Old South, 1932
Old South, 1932
We would go down to watch
the fishmongers gut the bream,
father with hand on clutch,
a barge with smoke and steam -
Rumour Mill
Rumours may have reached you of
my imminent demise.
They’re largely true, the eyes
of Don Quixote’s every lovelook down and almost see my flask
of wine, beer, whisky, rum,
fuel that helped me come
this far, where bells now lift my mask. (more…) -
At the gates of heaven
he did not know the names
beyond the bombing bay.But many miles away
he could still see the flames
judging the dead in Dresden. -
November 11, 2016 Leo Yankevich
Veterans Hospital
Some nights are never-ending hells
for these old veterans in our care.
We do not hand out pills, but shells,
as out of battlefields they stare
from over sixty years ago
on far-off Guam or Guadalcanal.
With trembling hands they try to show
how the bravest or youngest fell.
(more…) -
338 words
My first encounter with a Leonard Cohen song was in October of 1982. I had invited a Polish exchange student to a party in my fraternity house room. He came with an acoustic guitar and played and sang Cohen’s “Suzanne,” a song from the 1967 album Songs of Leonard Cohen. It was my third year at Alliance College. I was struck by the sublime beauty of the song. (more…)
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Leo Yankevich
The Hypocrisies of Heaven: Poems New & Old
San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2016
148 pagesThere are three formats for The Hypocrisies of Heaven:
- Hardcover: $25 (add $5 for postage, $10 for postage to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, & the Far East)
- Paperback: $10 (add $5 for postage, $10 for postage to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, & the Far East)
- E-book: $3
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Did Jesus Christ die on the cross at Golgotha to atone the sins of humanity, offering redemption to all who believed in him? Or was he a heretic Jew who attempted to reform Judaism so as to strengthen the Jewish in-group, which obviously was weak due to infighting and bitter acrimony among traders on the market squares of the Levant?
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She finds herself all by herself in bed,
a web of sunshine on the downy sheet,
a wedding day of bells inside her head,
a layer of cream upon her skin, her feet
still sore from twenty years of love and toil,
yet she thinks that life’s been pretty good.
She hears the bacon sizzle, coffee boil
inside the dented pot of spinsterhood.
She has survived the cold and loneliness
of her decisions, and of her mistakes, (more…)