Stephan Delbos

Bio: Stephan Delbos, the Poet Laureate of Plymouth, MA., is the author of In Memory of Fire (Cape Cod Poetry Review, 2016); Light Reading (BlazeVOX, 2019); and Small Talk (Dos Madres, 2021). His play Deaf Empire, about composer Bedřich Smetana, was produced by Prague Shakespeare Company in 2017. His co-translation of The Absolute Gravedigger, by Czech poet Vítězslav Nezval, was awarded the PEN/Heim Translation Grant in 2015 and was published by Twisted Spoon Press. Paris Notebook, translations from Czech poet Tereza Riedlbauchová, is forthcoming from Verse Chorus Press. He is a Founding Editor of B O D Y (www.bodyliterature.com). Website: www.stephandelbos.com

Poem for Aliases

I had a kid affinity for dog tags.GI Joe offered honorary realAmerican hero status for ten dollars.Engraved Max Thunder when they cameby mail. I lived childhood embarrassedof my name and daily wore an alias.
One morning I stood across AllertonStreet from Patrick, my first best friend,lobbing the tags over telephone wiresto his open hands. The ball chain caughtsomeone’s conversation, spun tight and stopped,
knotted. What to do but walk homewithout the wrong name on my neck? for C.C.

Poem for Child Soldiers

Winters thaw longing for the limitlessafternoons of August I deployedto play Army on a front lawn battlefield;razor wire picket fence, the neighborsterrorists, shrill rattle of tongue againstteeth: reports from the universal boyhooduzi echoing tonight in the splutterof a cocktail lounge men’s bathroomhand dryer. I remember and pointa loaded mock Mac 10 at the mirror,cashmere sweater camouflage, but nowmy manmade gunshots don’t kid anyone. for J.D.

Red Sky at Morning

Barges dredge Plymouth harbor. Gape of my father’s mouth half-conscious, neurological ICU I lean into his crusted lips to catch a few knotted words in the bucket of my ear. Crane jaws gorge on dripping blobs of silt and seawater, mud and stone torn from the bottom they must deepen.
We are swimming over a pit’s edge
 empty grave holes underwater cemetery of the sea, dark splotches on his brain scan blood bursts the hulls of its vessels.
My father floats inside his diving bell body, depressurized eyes, distant radar pulses fading down a sunken canyon.

Loitering on the Point

Waiting on the past-dark beach. Buoyed light,channel markers’ glare,
final cries of gullsdrown, dunes sunkin slumber.
Nothing out here to speak of, whydo we insist we stay?
I pocket a hand full of night-washed sand;summer’s symbol I declare.
No one wants this seasonover. August alwaysceases. We go on.

Poem for Fidelities

Asking all the old questions, we stoodan hour under a streetlamp’s bell jar;every bar too swollen with laughterto talk. In earnest, as if we couldtouch truth, we kicked toes and shook handsfor this is what we do. Stubborn as footstools.That was a simile. Michael my friendand I were stoned, discussing the schoolsof thought on fidelity, capturedcomet of a lit joint slipping like beliefbetween us. I mumbled how I’dknown one love. Into the darkness scaredI pushed her. Michael said we swim in space.Float helpless. I described her face. for M.P.

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