Frank X. Gaspar is an American poet, novelist, and professor of Portuguese descent. His most recent novel is Stealing Fatima (Counterpoint press, December, 2009). His collection of poetry, Night of a Thousand Blossoms (Alice James Books, 2004) was one of twelve books honored as the “Best Poetry of 2004” by Library Journal. His most recent collection of poems is Late Rapturous, from Autumn House Press.
Poetry
Summer 2011
The Sermon of Saint Anthony to the Fish
Preached in Sao Luis do Maranhao, 1654. Wind off the harbor at 5:00 a.m. Sky still black in the west-facing window, already the little streets are sounding with work—metal banging […]
Poetry
Summer 1986
Leaving Pico
We heard Pico from the kitchenwhere the living sat rollingcigarettes in their thick fingers,their bottles of Narragansettin front of them on the tablewhere they sat and said verde,green, like the […]
Poetry
Summer 2011
September 10th—Black Notebook #2
I was sitting up on the graves in Provincetown, my back against the old Gaspar stone, and I could feel my grandfather angry and restless and hating to be dead. […]
Poetry
Winter 1996
Confessions
I Voice over: Then to Carthage I came. Shadows on the flat water and towers majestic in their darkened shoulders which slouched coldly from the light … New voice […]
Poetry
Summer 2011
The Lesser Alleluia
This is for when you have been proven and receive the crown of life. It differs from the Greater Alleluia, for the Greater includes a robe of glory, stolam gloriae. […]
Poetry
Spring 1995
Whiskey
Which is foolish to praise for it took my grandfather’s sopping life and wrung it out like the old checkered shirt he always wore, wool sluffed down to a sheen […]
Poetry
Summer 2011
Are We Not Safe Here?
There is something very strange now about the wars, how they seem to go on and on all by themselves, whether anyone's tending them or not. None of our roofs […]
Poetry
Spring 1995
Small Prayer for the World without Mercy on Us
Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, and thou hast withholden bread from the hungry. — Job 22:7, KJV Then they found themselves in the usual corridors, […]
Poetry
Summer 2011
Black Notebook, Psalm 15, Dead Sea Scrolls, New Bedford
—What can I say, if you do not open my mouth? The fall sun on the pitched roof of the ancient schoolhouse across the street, its chimneys and skylights, gulls […]
Poetry
Spring 1995
Kapital
Hooking boxes of dogfish across the packinghouse floor, take the fat grease pencil you use to mark 36/BOS or 42/NY on the split-pine boxlids and draw a circle around the […]
Poetry
Winter 2001
One Thousand Blossoms
Well, is it really wise to search for guidance in a small room cluttered with books and papers, with a glass of whiskey and a box of wheat crackers, with […]
Poetry
Autumn 1988
Tía Joanna
You are in God and God is in you like the fish is in the sea and the sea is in the fish. Saint Bernadette When she enters the church, […]
Poetry
Winter 2001
I Go Out to Share a Smoke with the Archangel
When I go outside on nights like this, nights without cloud or breeze, city nights full of buzz and hoarse whisper and the distant surf of automobiles breaking upon darkness, […]
Poetry
Autumn 1988
Golden Colt Ranch
We never got as far as Mexico, our dream of saffron cliffs and maguey running to the blue Gulf, but here in the chaparral hills over our arid valley there […]
Poetry
Winter 1999
Field Guide to the Heavens
Tonight I am speaking in tongues again. Listen to all the stars with names as old as Mesopotamia: Rukbat Arkab, Nunki, Lesath, Shaula. They are shining forth in the Archer […]
Poetry
Summer 1986
Passing
Today on my front lawnfour young girls stop without seeing meto shout and playin some small interruptionof their passing down the street.Two of them already have small breastsbeneath their shirts, […]
Poetry
Winter 1999
The Tree
Then God said to me, stop feeling sorry for yourself—isn’t it enough that I love you? but I was angry and sleepy in that indistinct way when dreams linger like […]
Poetry
Summer 1986
August
I wanted to show her the dawncoming up over Truro, I wantedthe sky pulled downlike crepe after a dance.She wanted me to be Odysseusand tell her stories of that warI […]
Poetry
Autumn 1990
Where Do You Sleep?
I warn my son against eating the red berries on the chaparral hillside—coyote food lumping the odd scats we see on the clay road that edges the long pasture where […]
Poetry
Summer 1986
Catechism
We recite our way to heaven,obedience, faith, grace, the wordsfrom the blue book in the priest’s hands,our heads turning in the spring lightfrom his grave eyes to the windows whereyellow […]
Summer 2012
August
I wanted to show her the dawn
coming up over Truro, I wanted
the sky pulled down
like crepe after a dance.