FATE
There was nothing I could have done
about the life I was born into.
It was waiting for me and I slipped into it
like a man waking up in a dream.
So there I was with a name and a family,
with a certain height and weight,
with a certain body and a certain mind,
my first birthday present, inalterable as the weather,
which on that day was mostly cloudy and cool,
with a chance of rain, just as it is today.
That’s why I’m thinking about
my first living moment: the blinding light,
the blood, the sudden leap into my fate.
A LIFE
When push came to shove, I shoved off.
The sea was blue and green,
white streaks etched in the night sky.
I was looking for a milky way
but found dark woods instead.
Days and nights of weeping, self-laceration, despair.
Everything was deserved, all bets were off.
I lived by the philosophy of low expectations.
I lived every day as if it were my last.
I lived by the skin of my teeth.
I knew no one, no one knew me.
“You are like a seagull,” she said,
“lost between heaven and earth.”
Fabulous marino sunsets in places
where no one spoke the language.
Islands so green they pained the open eye.
Fabulous cities with rooftops lost in the clouds.
I passed through doors sharp as scythes,
walked down streets without end,
always merry and bright.
The view from my hotel room window:
parking lot, whitewashed concrete
without windows or doors,
anonymous pale hills on the horizon.
“What could I ever give you that could compete
with what you give yourself?” she said.
I saw the world through the eyes of a singer
and everything was music for a while.
Beauty sat in my lap and crossed her legs.
I touched the bare earth and fresh water flowed.
I even learned to dance.
But when the music stopped
the world stopped moving
and so, at last, did I.
SIEGFRIED MORTKOWITZ is a freelance journalist based in Prague. His work has appeared in B O D Y, Brown’s Window, The Prague Revue, and After Hours. His first chapbook, Eating Brains and Other Poems, was published by After Hours Press in 2014 and his forthcoming full poetry collection, A Matter of Life or Death, will be released by the same publisher in Autumn 2025.
Read more by Siegfried Mortkowitz
Non-fiction in the September 2019 issue
THE STORY: Siegfried Mortkowitz on Leonard Michaels’ “City Boy”
Poem in the May 2013 issue
Poem in the September 2012 issue
THE POEM: Reading Frank O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died”
Poem in the January 2018 issue
Personal essay in the Summer 2022 issue