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Steven Ratiner: Typos
Word instead of wood but,
sodden, it smoked when it burned.
I wrote god for good who was, once––
in my childhood years, crowned
with the nimbus of that capital G––
but now tends to be a placeholder
for nightmare, tears.
Seeking solace in the pastoral, but
grove came out as grave and the lymph nodes,
irradiated, naked as nymphs, danced
in a circle brandishing shovels while
nightjars, in downed pine, chanted
yis-gadal v’yis kadash sh’may raboh,
that dreadful trill––and all I could do
was stand there, heart-stung, composing
sorrow inside my head.
Glossolalia of the keyboard, my fingers
say what I cannot, never meant to––I’m
marred by, married to this compulsive
language and cannot shut it (shout it) out,
even in this house of silence.
Live instead of love. Because that’s
what’s left for me without your yes––or
did I mean eyes?––to bless my brokenness.
Hello hell. These inked lines
sinking into white
cotton bond,
indelible.
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Steven Ratiner. From Grief’s Apostrophe (Beltway Editions, 2025).
Steven Ratiner has appeared in Parnassus, Agni, Hanging Loose, Poet Lore, Plume and Salamander. He is the former poetry book critic for the Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor. Ratiner was recently elected as the new President of the New England Poetry Club, one of America’s oldest poetry associations.
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A marvelous poem!
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This is brilliant. From conception to execution. And after smiling I wept.
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Finding the language = “coming to terms” and finding the tone = first surrendering to the “glossolalia of the keyboard,” to be led by words back to the grief that required the poem. This is brilliant and moving: light and heat. Bravo!
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And with a simile on my lips I will get up and go about my die
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Go about my die. That’s powerful.
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Wow! What a poem!
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I’ve read plenty of poems that encircle grief, but this just might be my favorite. The way mispelling, typos, and the “glossolalia of the keyboard,” (never seen that Pentecostal word in a poem before), eventually reach the hidden center of the poem: the less of loss.
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‘glossolalia of the keyboard’: what a wonderful phrase. Thanks for highlighting it.
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I love this poem!
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I do too, Martha. Steven’s work is new to me, a nice discovery.
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wow! What a deceptively wonderful poem! I hope I might make a meaningful misteak in its prays, as I’ve no beef with what’s been done and left undone by my own self & this fine homunculus uncle of verse.
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hahaha!
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