Rick Bursky

One of the things I love about poetry is the way our own poems have the ability to amaze us and teach us things about ourselves.
- Rick Bursky

Interviewer: Do you recall reading (or writing) a poem that made you realize this was the path you wanted to follow?

Yes, I remember the exact moment. It was in the basement of a church in Los Angles. I began my life as a poet some twenty years ago with a poetry class at UCLA Extension. I took the class hoping it would make me a better advertising copywriter. I always believed poets were great writers of prose and thought it would be useful to my advertising career. In the first class the instructor read us Randall Jarrell’s “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” and Etheridge Knight’s “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminally Insane.” Right then and there my entire life changed. I found what I would dedicate the rest of my life to.
-Rick Bursky

THE SEAPORT DINER, POINT JEFFERSON STATION

My mother and a cousin decide to go to The Seaport Diner,
my father's favorite, for a cup of coffee on New Year's Eve.
Though he's been dead for six years, they take him along.
The black marble box that holds his ashes is placed
in a shopping bag, then on their table next to a window.
On another night the waitress might have asked about the box.
But tonight the diner is crowded, she doesn't notice
that two women asked for three cups of coffee.
There are many ways to suck the marrow out of time's bones.
This is my mother's. No one's seen the inside of the box,
though at times I've thought all of heaven was within.
By refusing to bury it my mother is unwittingly hiding
my father from the devil. At a small table in the center of the box,
my father sits. Ashes piled to his knees, he remembers
flames and fears he's in hell. If he walked forever
he would discover the wall and on the other side of the wall
my mother's hand holding the spoon she stirred coffee with.

(c) 2004, Rick Bursky, The Soup of Something Missing, Bear Star Press

Interview
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