Askold Melnyczuk -- Head: A fragment

American Poetry Review, The, Jan 1995 by Melnyczuk, Askold

Head mumbled to itself, so I came nearer. We were by the Lech Walesa Bridge in Dorchester. I said: "I've loved..." It was floating in the river, alone, balding, with gray teeth, moth wings stapled to its eyes, and lips about to slip into the stream. "Which way..." it broke in, rudely, and, as so often in the past, I wished I had my camcorder so I might later soberly reflect on the hilarious ambiguities of the moment--"...to Ithaka?"

Askold Melnyczuk's first novel, What is Told, published this spring by Faber and Faber, was named a Notable Book of 1994 by The New York Times. He has published poetry and translations in Peqoud, Boulevard, The Greensboro Review, The Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere.