He’d been Simon

who swaggered down

Byzantium’s back roads

in his silk taxman’s robe,

who lost control & hurled

a loaf of bread at a beggar,

finding no stone. Felled

by illness, he saw three

Moors weighing his deeds

on an enormous scale,

erring in his favor,

the thrown bread

in the good pan,

counted as alms.

___ 

Hilary Sideris lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she studies Italian and teaches nontraditional college students. She has her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Arts & Letters, Cimarron Review, Confrontation, Connecticut Review, The Evansville Review, Green Mountains Review, Grey Sparrow, Gulf Coast, Mid-American Review, The Normal School Magazine, Poet Lore, Tar River Poetry, Willow Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly, among many others. Her first and third chapbooks, The Orange Juice is Over and Gold & Other Fish, have been published by Finishing Line Press, and her second chapbook, Baby, was published by Pudding House Press.

Posted by Leif. View all posts by Leif
Friday, December 30th, 2011 2:32 pm
Categories: Current: 5.4, Poetry