for Joyce Polistena
You knew her simple name and called to her,
allowing that we often make mistakes.
That night, she thought she’d seen the gardener.
You looked upon the coins of Lucifer
and took, withal, what you had come to take.
You called to him, as you would call to her.
You lay amid a hundred pounds of myrrh
where few can tell what is and isn’t fake,
and there you were at night, the gardener.
But what is truth, and what were you to her?
Some nights, not even Peter stays awake.
You knew her name, and so you called to her.
You were the one who so few thought you were,
but just a word was all that it would take,
and what then does it mean to be a gardener?
Look how bad we’ve been and what occurs
when Peter, too, is sleeping at the gate.
The words you uttered first were just for her.
Then, forever, now… the gardener.
John Foy’s third book of poems, No One Leaves the World Unhurt, won the 2020 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and was published in 2021 by Autumn House Press. His second book, Night Vision, won the New Criterion Poetry Prize and was published by St. Augustine’s Press in 2016. It was also a finalist for the 2018 Poets’ Prize. His poems have been included in the Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, The Raintown Review Anthology, and Rabbit Ears, an anthology of poems about TV, and they have appeared widely in journals and online. He lives and works in New York.
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Author: John Foy
John Foy’s third book of poems, No One Leaves the World Unhurt, won the 2020 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and was published in 2021 by Autumn House Press. His second book, Night Vision, won the New Criterion Poetry Prize and was published by St. Augustine’s Press in 2016. It was also a finalist for the 2018 Poets’ Prize. His poems have been included in the Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, The Raintown Review Anthology, and Rabbit Ears, an anthology of poems about TV, and they have appeared widely in journals and online. He lives and works in New York.
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