KNOT Magazine
Fall Issue 2022
B.Z. Nitich
EXILED FOR JAZZ
The military
exile the thirst
for freedom and jazz
remembering
your twenty first birthday
in a fervor
of fevered expression
yet you suffer
working on islands
from life's painful images
amid political repression
your language amazes
as you write in silence
from the notes you play
on a a historical scale
survive on riffs.
NEW YORK CITY 1989
With the romantic
gone
here in the French
underground
once again
playing jazz
to a melody of Mahler
and Rameau
before a French mirror
doubled up
for Mallarme,
the wind
has Paris icicles
for us
in the restaurant
we murder croissants
by the portmanteau movies
of Spanish refugees
seeing bridal angels
of Chagall and Picasso
of our passing.
B.Z. Njtich is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher.
His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art, The Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Hawaii Review, Le Guepard (France), Kadmos (France), Prism International, Jejune (Czech Republic), Leopold Bloom (Budapest), Antioch Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others.
He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.