Stopped at the Gate It is easy to forget we are fragile without skullcaps, without sweaters, without television to tell the stories that warm us. In the snow I pee a sketch like a boy. It is a refugee’s boat, medieval, with a shallow prow, and beside the single mast the dribble of all that can be saved in a shipwreck. All that freezes in deep cold. All that melts when it thaws. There’s a rumor that Jesus could walk on water, right through these walls, your iron gate a mirage of fish. Al Ortolani’ s poetry has appeared in journals such as Rattle, New York Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, One Art Poetry Journal, Main Street Rag, Chiron Review, and many others. His most recent poetry collection is The Taco Boat, published by New York ...
Like the title says.