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Ron A. Kalman was born in Haifa to parents who fled Budapest during the Hungarian uprising of 1956, and after living near Paris for a few years, he came to America at age 6. He received his MFA from Emerson College and works as a limo driver in the Boston area. His poems and translations have appeared in The Exquisite Corps Annual, The Main Street Rag, Muddy River Poetry Review, Beacon Street Review and other publications.

THE MOMENT

Ron A. Kalman

I want to write a poem every night.

I want to come home from the hospital

with its antiseptic carpets washed and vacuumed daily

and feel like William Carlos Williams.

I want to lie about at night

beneath the radiating bulbs of my apartment

and I want the walls to dance.

I want to leap from my bed to the computer

and redeem the wasted years.

I want to be as prolific as Bukowski.

And if I hear a siren pass outside my window

(is there an arrest somewhere? a fire?)

I want to be arrested

because I am fire.

I want to throw in a touch of Frank O’Hara

because I love the way he wrote.

I don’t want any deep memory revelations.

I just want one ecstatic moment every night.

— Ron A. Kalman

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