Two Poems by Peter Bethanis
With just the right amount of useless junk, loneliness is bearable.
With just the right amount of useless junk, loneliness is bearable.
It makes no sense to close yourself off from others now. I receive a joke, laugh my head off, pass it on. If it's not in a language that the other person knows, I translate it.
The Kumbh Mela never comes to Pittsburgh: no one mistakes the Allegheny for the Ganges.
The first days after you died sunk like stones.
Then the interrogation began. He described “vicious verbal violence,” with his interrogators screaming, swearing at him, 'You don’t preach Christianity, you preach shit.'
A survivor craves closeness, yet sabotages even the slightest hint of it.
Always someone somewhere whose wall-kicking must be stopped.
I see her reach for the bare-chested man with the homemade tattoos and the dog that doesn’t respond.
I don’t know how the world ends, but I know fire lies.
The soul of its scent captivates the heart of hearts.