Bruce Isaacson
Bruce Isaacson earned degrees at Claremont McKenna, Dartmouth, and Brooklyn College, where he wrote a thesis for noted American poet Allen Ginsberg. He is known in New York as a surprise finalist in the inaugural Nuyorican Poetry Slam and in L.A. as a poet in the Helena’s-Largo-Hollywood Review readings where Hollywood performers read as poets. In San Francisco, he was a coordinator of the Cafe Babar reading, an infamous free-for-all that was part of the 1980s San Francisco Spoken Word resurgence. He was also the first Poet Laureate of Clark, County, Nevada, a community of two million souls encompassing city of Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Strip. He is publisher of Zeitgeist Press, with over 100 poetry titles to date and has lived in Michoacán, Mexico, New York City, Los Angeles, Berkeley-San Francisco, and Leningrad, Russia. He lives today in Las Vegas, Nevada.
My Heart When It’s A Whale
after David Gollub
Mostly roaming silent in dark waters
It is as a thing put steaming
To cool in a tub darker
Than time, times to come, that is
Not times past which are placed
In the afternoon light of memory like
Family photos framed on a
Shelf no one looks at, or a
Cup of wrong coffee, you look
Knowing it’s yours while saying aloud
To no one ‘that’s not mine’ that’s my
Heart holding its breath in the
Deep, lost, with nowhere to go, looking up at
Desire like the sun seen through
Three miles of water, remembering how
Fabulous it was to be young, now that
Murder’s at the border of your
Eyebrows like overgrown bushes
Trimming them’s like trying to walk a cat, like
“Trying” to save a marriage, like trying to
Raise a child when you
Already raised a monster, Dreamzilla’s
Little brother playing with
Firetrucks with an x, t-r-u-
Ex-wives and ex-lovers, ex-
Communicado’d saints, shining hopefully at
History while lost in language, like
A whale, who comes to the surface and
Blows, grateful to breathe, but still
Lost in the wallows and wonders
of the deep.
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