Hanoch Guy Kaner
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Selected poems from 
We Pass Each Other on the Stairs: 
120 Real and Imagined Encounters


Dark Seeds

Men are dark seeds
expelled by their desperate fathers
at the edge of the Sodomean Desert.
Tossed up in sandstorms,
live in the curse of broken earth.

Open dark seeds with swollen red tongues
crushed by falling rocks.
After long years of drought,
they sprout angrily through
the wounded earth,
fissures,
as black scorpions
fencing each other with their deadly claws,
stingers locked,
drunk on each other’s poison.
They dance, skip,
dance
on the ravines till they fall, exhausted
and snoring,
by Eden’s fences,
exempt from making love to Eve
or having to answer to anybody
and the crows keep shrieking.


Sweet Peas

Oh, hi, Jack,
I know I am late.
I am usually at the gym at twelve.
My yard was full of magnolia flowers.
I have already planted carrots, onions and tomatoes
in my vegetable garden.
You never had a garden?
With me, it is a force of habit
every Spring.

No, I am single.
My wife died in ’72,
my girlfriend died in ’82.
I have had several relationships since then.

Life goes on.
Next week, I will plant broccoli and sweet peas.

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