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TVBC
JOHN RYBICKI currently
teaches creative writing to inner-city children in his hometown
of Detroit and serves as a guest lecturer at schools across the
country. His poems and stories have appeared in North
American Review, Field, Bomb, Alaska
Quarterly Review, Ohio Review, Poetry East,
and The Quarterly, as well as in numerous anthologies.
His first book of poems, Traveling at High Speeds (New
Issues Poetry Press), appeared in 1996, followed by Fire
Psalm; his latest collection,
Yellow-Haired Girl with Spider (March Street Press), was
published in 2002. When he’s not writing, teaching,
touring, or admiring the small wonders of the universe, Mr.
Rybicki enjoys doing carpentry and spending time with his wife,
Julie.
On My Porch Steps /
John Rybicki
—for Matt Cashen
It’s tonight after my night class
and none of my oceans are tearing
their white hands. The concrete and grass
turn into water, and you and I are floating
into a shotgun shell that emptied its powder
into the night. The oak
and apple trees on
the hill behind us shake loose their camouflage
and slip their roots from underground to try
and follow. I start climbing out of the body,
climbing toward heaven over piled alphabets
my angels are sledging into spark in some
foundry in the tin dark; climbing over rose
bushes, river water, and handlebars, until
there’s only one ladder left balancing one leg
on either side of a roof peak and tottering,
jutting its bone into the stars. I climb
until there’s only one monkey bar left
on a ladder for me to pendulum my legs
under; then higher still,
latching one fist
then another around stray leaves and
chimney ashes gusting up. I can’t
drop
my hands into your earth,
can’t crush one
brick before you, to say
there’s light raining
in all matter, can’t say
I know the way by
leaps and bounds toward a happiness that’s
simple as bread rising.
Kick the ladder down
when you reach the highest rung and lunge
up after me brother. I’m
leaving angel feathers
there that will set you swinging from feather
to fiery stone, will bear you off
into your great unknown.
—TVBR Issue #23: Vol.
IX, No. 1—Taking
Flight
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