Ryan Black
from You Were Never Lovelier
In Sofia, in Iztok, someone had constructed a memorial—
a wooden box, gold cross and flowers—
outside the complex where I was staying.
Photographs. A blessing: Да бъде светъл пътят ти!
The only word I understood meant light.
It rained the first week I was there.
The sun hardly breaking through. I’d gone
to see a woman I thought could make things right.
I kept my vaccination card with my passport.
How reckless my desire. From there,
I flew to Athens. Mostly, I was alone.
You could smell the bitter orange in the trees.
Ryan Black is the author of The Tenant of Fire (University of Pittsburgh Press), winner of the 2018 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and Death of a Nativist, selected by Linda Gregerson for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. He has published previously or have work forthcoming in Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Queens College of the City University of New York, and lives in Jackson Heights.
Return to May 2022 Edition
In Sofia, in Iztok, someone had constructed a memorial—
a wooden box, gold cross and flowers—
outside the complex where I was staying.
Photographs. A blessing: Да бъде светъл пътят ти!
The only word I understood meant light.
It rained the first week I was there.
The sun hardly breaking through. I’d gone
to see a woman I thought could make things right.
I kept my vaccination card with my passport.
How reckless my desire. From there,
I flew to Athens. Mostly, I was alone.
You could smell the bitter orange in the trees.
Ryan Black is the author of The Tenant of Fire (University of Pittsburgh Press), winner of the 2018 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and Death of a Nativist, selected by Linda Gregerson for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. He has published previously or have work forthcoming in Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Queens College of the City University of New York, and lives in Jackson Heights.
Return to May 2022 Edition