Albert Goldbarth
/spring 1970
VILLAGE OF THE MERMAIDS
“Each morning they line the narrow walk, / They listen south to the mermaids.”
BY Albert Goldbarth - FROM ROANOKE REVIEW, 1970
current work
When I Say My Sister’s Breasts
what I mean is: hell,
they took them away. A knife,
the chemo, the radiation;
whatever. To save her. A little
like the way the animal leaves its paw,
its gnawed-off paw, in the trap.
The emperor orders a hundred men and women
into the valley where enemy soldiers wait
behind trees…so the rest
of his troops can make a safe retreat.
A man withdraws his love
from his daughter, to keep what he thinks
is the love of the woman he met last month.
A day is a line we walk, continually
giving up things to the gods, so they
might make the line we walk longer.
Albert Goldbarth was born in Chicago in 1948 and currently lives in Wichita, Kansas. In addition to one novel and collections of books of essays, he has been publishing books of poetry for forty-five years, two of which have received the National Book Critics Circle Award; the most recent is The Now (University of Pittsburgh Press). His hands have never touched a computer keyboard.
photograph of albert goldbarth by michael pointer
