Joshua Rivkin

Lifeguard 

My father is modest. He didn’t save hundreds 
from drowning. Just a few dozen. 
Gathered from the swell, the riptide, rough,
rough waves he carried them ashore. 

Half-lit, he tells it again.  The storm 
against sky, the lifeguard without fear 
alone in the water, the crowd 
gathered to witness.  

Here’s what to notice:             
the danger of weather, failures 
of the other people to help, we never know 
what happened to the boy. 

This is my humble brag, my bravado, 
my foolish affection 
to write the same poem year after year. 
In some versions I am the lifeguard. 
In others I’m drowning. 
Then I’m sky. Then wave. 

(from Suitor, Ren Hen Press, 2020) 

New Economy 

A man tries to trade his guitar for a city bus.  
My pick for your passengers. Six strings for sixteen wheels. 

A bride on her wedding day exchanges her love 
for bright weather, a groom exchanges his hands for hers. 

A father offers to trade his family for a hotel’s worth of sleep.  
A sailor offers the Pacific for a hotel’s worth of sex. 

Tonight, the shirt from my back, my singing mouth
my endless praise for your skin or company. 

I’ll give you my stethoscope for a red barn: a doctor.  
I’ll give you my right arm for your left: his patient. 

It’s the inequality of pain a sleepless woman wants 
to give away. Here, take mine, she offers to freight trains 

whistling their replies through the city’s poorest wards: 
Jealousy gets you jealousy. Rage gets you rage. 

“What wouldn’t you offer?” a man asks the pawnshop window.
“What wouldn’t you take?” replies the glass.

(from Suitor, Ren Hen Press, 2020) 

Suitor's Dream

I want to begin again.

Your buckle undone, an eye
opened, the snap clicked
one half from the other–

It’s the moment before
skin, before clothes pattern the floor
like samba steps, this neck
with hand, this waist
with this mouth.

We are only the possibility
of an end; I haven’t made a promise
I will not keep.

I want to begin again.
A new desire is an old one rising.
Old mistake. Old news.

And then it’s winter.
Wind lifts snow from ground
boughs shimmer trinkets of ice.
These are not for us.

Water for tea boils and wind strikes
our windows. A storm
on every part of the glass.

The kettle raises its mouth of air. Singing
here, you will never be satisfied
with what you have.

Singing, you will break every promise.
Of course you will.
Of course you will.

(from Suitor, Ren Hen Press, 2020)

Rooms Inside Rooms

You. The waves belly up to sand. No You. The ducks dive. You. City kids. They kick a starfish between them. Bravado, wrote a friend, is the work of the gods. We’re fickle as coastlines. A woman with gray hair and binoculars walks over and picks up the sea star – she knows about these things – her fingers fit neatly in the space between the animal’s body and arms. She shows them what they couldn’t know by looking at the topside, its curve and spike, defense and shimmer: nothing is alive inside. You can hold it if you want. Hollow as wind off the bay. Empty vessel, empty room. Cavafy: rooms inside rooms, left vacant by bodies and left full by time: three wicker chairs, two yellow vases, the mirrored wardrobe, the lover’s bed, and the afternoon light slipping from wall to wall to wall – all gone, all here. Past the waves, more waves. The woman leaves the kids to argue over their treasure: take it home or leave it. He holds the sea to his ear. An arriving surf, a bird’s wanting call, a world beyond this one. How lush this absence, how full is this room. Cavafy: They must still be around somewhere, these old things. How we try to leave them. How they call us back: You. You. You.