Definite Article
Often I think of the Broad Street sidewalks,
the breakfast place, the Christmas market, the libraries:
1600s stone of the Sheldonian, creamsmooth new stone
of the Weston. I remember Broad Street quiet though
it was never: I guess because it made me quiet,
leased a quiet I never knew before.
Broad Street arterial, medieval, hale with
centerness. Where I walk wrapped in the ankle-length
wool coat bought over Christmas in Sweden. Clearness
of stars on late winter nights at once breathless and the
deepest breath. Starlight clarifies the kebab truck,
Chez Hassan, where a heap of chips and cheese
costs 3 pounds. Coat thrifted, black with a leopard
print collar, one plastic button missing at the wrist.
.
On Polish Americans
Polish should not use the Latin alphabet,
but it does because of Christendom.
Stephanie Kwolek, chemist, creator of Kevlar,
born to a father born Jan Chwałek: Kwolek
a tragic transliteration: Kvaweck preciser, but tastes
too humid to the American mouth, consonants thick.
Leon Czolgosz hung on to his spelling, at least, save for
the accented l that means a w sound. Steelworker, anarchist,
presidential assassin born near Lake Huron, electrocuted at 28.
Kwolek born near Pittsburgh. 60 miles from Warsaw, 40 from
the Belarusian border, on an old doorframe I see
the slim rectangular fade of a mezuzah once hung
in Siedlce. Shed-litz-uh, northeastern Poland, name a proper
amphibrach: metrical foot rare to English but popular to Polish
verse and Russian. Siedlce has been a place with a name for
5 or 6 centuries, been Russian, Hapsburgian, Austro-Hungarian.
Crowds of Polish consonants have begun to feel familiar, snug, old
sweaters of sounds. The page emaciates Polish, but the ear plushes,
fattens, consonants generous. I do not speak it, though I hope to.
.
Annie Diamond is a pro-Palestine Ashkenazi Jewish poet and recovering academic who has made her home in Chicago. She has been awarded fellowships by MacDowell, Luminarts Cultural Foundation, The Lighthouse Works, and Boston University, where she earned her MFA in 2017. Her poems are forthcoming in Sonora Review, and Midwest Review, and appear in Western Humanities Review, No Tokens Journal, Pornstar Martini Magazine, and elsewhere. She is working on publishing her first book. Find her at anniediamondpoet.com and on Instagram @zanniediamond.
Stone Poetry Quarterly 