Vanishing Point

by Mickey Cesar

Every day/I check the obituaries/hoping to see your name--" These are poems of Saturday nights alone and Sunday morning cafes full of cigarette smoke, coffee gone cold and longing. An angel descends from heaven to sit on a barstool next to a lonely man, then leaves him to another "ashtray morning" on dirty sidewalks, "when love dies like a forgotten melody." Though most of the poems deal with loss, there are occasional celebrations like an escape into childhood. But even here in the sunshine there are "wicked hounds that hunger in the distance." A gathering of fluent, smoky poems in which in a coffee shop or bar near you "a strange skinny white guy/writes as if all his life/depends on the smooth stroke of his pen."

74 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005