Mary Magdalene, a Tree
after the wooden sculpture by Donatello
He carved
me ragged: My
wooden gown hangs jagged
on my frame. Supposed sins drip
from my
limbs; tears
pierce soil. Regrets
grow to seedlings: no &
not. I can’t cleave myself from shame,
can’t speak.
my truth’s
sparse leaves. Tourists
gaze at me from guidebooks.
Alone, I stand in this sunless
corner.
Phantoms
of recall caw
mercilessly as night
floods the city’s stone streets. Rumors
spread &
distort
my past. My words
can’t smite them. I remain
in this Florentine niche, leafless.
Loveless.
—Presence 2017
Dean Kostos
May 21, 1954 - November 14, 2022
Dean Kostos’s collections of poetry include Broken Color (MadHat Press, 2021), This Is Not a Skyscraper (winner of the 2013 Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award), Rivering (Spuyten Duyvil, 2012), Last Supper of the Senses (2005), among others. His poems, essays and translations have appeared in over 300 journals, and a literary critical piece appeared on the Harvard UP website. A founder of the Greek-American Writers’ Association, Dean edited Pomegranate Seeds: An Anthology of Greek-American Poetry (Somerset Hall, 2008). Recipient of The Rockefeller Foundation’s Cultural Innovation Grant, he compiled, edited and translated poems from Ancient, Byzantine and Modern Greek. Dean’s libretto, Dialogue: Angel of Peace, Angel of War, was set to music by James Bassi and performed by Voices of the Ascension. His poem, “Subway Silk,” was translated into a film and screened in Tribeca and at San Francisco’s IndieFest. He taught at Wesleyan, the Gallatin School of NYU and City University of New York and held workshops for gifted adolescents at Columbia University.