Friday Mar 29

Timothy-Liu.jpg Timothy Liu is the author of eight books of poems, most recently Polytheogamy and Bending the Mind Around the Dream's Blown Fuse
His poems have been translated into ten languages, and his journals and papers are archived in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. Liu lives in Manhattan.

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The Moon in Greece


When the sea is calm and the moon

near full, the fishermen say the weather
will remain as it has been, the ships

will sail at dawn, and all can go on

as before. So it’s hard to imagine why
one would not love the moon on a night

like this, or any night, whether it be seen

or hidden, the moon exerting its pull
wherever we are, though here one sees

the real moon, not the one in the mind.
 
 


 
On Rhodes


There are two kinds of men—
those who grab their own

knees riding on the hump

of a roaring Vespa, hoping
the turns that will get taken

won’t be too sharp or sudden—

and those with arms looped
around a buddy’s waist,

leaning into all the starts

and stops, eager for wherever
his man might take him—