Michael Antman, my best friend since college, has been the editor of this sonnet sequence -- My Human Disguise -- since its inception in 2011. He's read and advised me on virtually every one of more than 600 poems. He is also an accomplished photographer and has inspired all of the sonnets found on this page. You can find Michael's considerable collection of photographs at Instagram, at https://instagram/michaelantman/. Michael is also an accomplished novelist, critic and essayist. He's written two novels, Cherry Whip and Everything Solid Has a Shadow. "Crossing" was his first image to appear in the sequence, so I made it the 250th in gratitude for his contribution: il miglior fabbro.
Woman and Wind (Michael Antman), Sonnet #611
Eve listened to her heart and sinned,
Then passed out of paradise
Into paradise, clothed in wind,
Her mind unclouded as her eyes.
She found her husband hiding
Behind trees — he found her blinding.
They found each other in their arms
And recited a litany of charms.
They knew this world was not broken
And stood awaiting the awoken
Moment of their forgiveness.
Distant laughter beckoned them on.
As they walked beneath the midday sun,
The wind billowed her white silk dress.
The Crossing (Michael Antman), Sonnet #250
The Chicago River drawbridge is up.
A moment of danger, repeated time
Overruled by STOP letters in their cups,
And a redundant Do Not Enter sign.
We wait because waiting is why we wait,
Nothing else in the world to do for long.
The fitful Spring air whistles through the grates
On the bridge, ageless sotto voce songs,
A sound of life beyond decay, so sweet.
The Windy City cannot hold its tongue.
The drawbridge collapses into a street,
And the crossings begin, of wheels and feet.
The boats below sail out toward Michigan,
Now crossing to then, again and again.
Irina Beatrix (photo by Michael Antman), Sonnet #261
The sundial at your wrist moves with the sun
And the stranger you meet each day, unseen
In the shadows, is yours, the only one:
He carries an ageless, cumbersome book,
In which he draws and draws your perfect face.
A face you've never recognized, he took
From you, idolizing the female race.
The scarlet dove drops a poppy into your lap --
You slip deeply into your alter consciousness.
A beautiful young woman closes her eyes too,
Centuries from now, and wakens you from your nap.
The death of your child is no longer meaningless.
Yes, you'll pass too -- into a woman who is you.
Note: The painting is Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Beata Beatrix.
The window frames are already bending.
The masonry, pitted by ageless soot,
Awaits the inevitable rending
Of every pillar and joist underneath --
The spitting of mortar like broken teeth.
Two pairs of women's shorts are on display,
But the lonely workman ignores the show.
Naked legs would only be in his way.
He turns the electric vacuum to blow.
Now he must wait for everything to dry.
He looks up for the first time, starts to cry.
He's sundered by a sweet paralysis.
It's beautiful, he thinks, not sure what is.
On Chicago streets, ubiquitous brick
Portraits and both mouthed and shouted stories
Of, not the dead, but spirits, pressed thick
Into the interstices of the air.
We know they are millions, huddling there,
So well hidden it's difficult to care.
How often tuck-pointed, the old brownstone,
Arched windows flattened by a glazier,
An old storage tank topped with a tin cone.
The lives within could not be hazier.
A haloed sweetheart with her mural grin,
Absolves spirit and flesh of painted sin.
The unseen millions breathe, breathe out, breathe in.
The visitor etched the word “act.”
I don’t know why inside a heart.
Call it a moment of found art,
All gesture and little impact.
We’re staring out of a lost room
Through a cracked and discolored frame.
Bayside, metals and water boom.
The bright red bridge, in glorious bloom,
Guardian of what went and came,
Is like all things only a name.
With wrought iron and steel cable,
Men can create. They’re capable
Of containing the setting sun
But must let go when day is done.
Sunfire in San Francisco (Michael Antman), Sonnet #565
The slant light at sunset
Parses brick and shadow
As if they’d never met,
As if they didn’t know
They are one and the same,
Congeries with one name.
That name is fire, and fire.
The bridge rises higher
To suspend fire and wire,
Reaching from sand to mire.
So old the paint and brick,
Cooling the shadow’s wick.
All these make sun insane,
Absent mist, fog, or rain.
Entity (Michael Antman), Sonnet #567
It’s too soon to write about it.
I prefer Spinoza’s spirit,
Its embodiment of rainbows,
No holier than house sparrows.
It’s all perhaps a point of view,
Nothing is preternatural,
Just perpetually new,
A pride before there is no fall.
I stand inside an open door.
Indirect sunlight suffuses
The hallway with its sweet odor —
Even motes of dust have uses.
Outside a statue of mother
Asks, “Are you you, or some other?”
Inventions (Michael Antman), Sonnet #570
We live where light and rust
Mount in measured layers
Like lovers without lust,
Or gods without prayers.
Who invented the bridge,
That fluvial sacrilege,
Or endless skyscrapers
Assailed by old newspapers?
They can’t blot out the sky
Or dry up the rivers —
Just twist the eye awry
Till the brainstem quivers.
Throw light on slabs of glass
And vertigoes will pass.
Nature knows few right angles.
Man tends to abjure the curved.
Last night the moon swerved
To miss a cloud. The sun dangles.
The old white oak blown down,
Scattered its broken branches.
The wind passed on without a sound
In invisible avalanches.
Some windows are an open cage
Door with nothing inside to show.
Some walls mimic an empty page —
One’s painted with a golden elbow.
We know nothing we don’t realize
With or without our golden eyes.
Path (Michael Antman), Sonnet #610
The path into these woods begins
With tentative steps on bent grass
Widening for two to walk abreast.
The locomotives’ blaring tocsins
Grow infrequent as the years pass.
Few paths reach a place unaddressed,
Though many have been abandoned.
(Van Gogh’s led into wheat fields
Where all men’s souls are pardoned
With the harvest’s generous yields.)
It’s hard to walk on railroad ties,
The first too close, the second too far.
I walk into woods, perhaps in error,
On a path that offers no alibis.
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