I USED TO BE AN ALTRUIST

I used to be an altruist
then I developed a mild form of

a neighbor asked me for a kidney
I reached out and gave him

my fear of wide open spaces
the idea someone could

2

walk away from a weeping child?
it was getting late and

I like your mouth
the way it looks when you say

all the forecasts are off
there’s

between us

3

there’s what
and who and why between us

also this statue
its unbearable embrace

can you bear it?
its almost unbearable embrace

4

and long prognosis:
the idea someone could

walk up to you from behind
or scream at night

this is only a test

this is only my life

Piotr Gwiazda’s recent poems and translations appear in Washington Square Review, Denver Quarterly, P-Queue, The Tiny, and Forms of Migration: Global Perspectives on Im/migrant Art and Literature (Falschrum Books, Berlin, 2022). In 2023 Diálogos Books published his translation of Polish writer Grzegorz Wróblewski’s Dear Beloved Humans: Selected Poems. He is Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.