by Eli Binkovitz

As a boy, he carried always
at hand a wrench, was thrilled

with the magic of multiplying
the earnest efforts of his arms

through the ancient tricks of
fulcrum plus lever plus distance

equals strength
equals movement.

 

He built clacking machines.
Copper wire around a magnet

shone like electricity. Little
transistors sang. He tended these

mechanical creations like gardens,
in secret, in love with nature.

Another such child might have wished
to become an engineer or a scientist

 

but Hans worshipped the mystery
of physics with his flushed and eager fingers

first, unmitigated by bloodless
equation. He was forbidden his first love

on account of how she dirtied his hands
with her oiled metal body. Reluctantly

he abandoned her for a tumultuous
marriage to the jealous lover of everyday

 

life. She adjusted her rumpled dress.
Her legs were too long, they stretched

from morning until night and Hans
was shorter than each day even in winter.

The family clucked and frowned. He drank
poison for his mother and his sister Anna

and the love of his life, he drank until
a rifle fired in a memory and it killed him

 

to think of it now. How his brothers
-in-arms heroic in uniforms

rushed to perfunctory rescue,
how, half-naked, he’d slumped,

arms powerless,
lashed at the wrists,

hands swollen and numb
with no magic.

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Eli Binkovitz is a Chicago poet with a BA in German studies from Oberlin College and contributions in a 2007 translation of Thomas Brasch’s collection of poems, “Was Ich Mir Wünsche” (“What I Wish For Myself”) from German into English. Their poems have appeared in Rising Phoenix Review, Vagabond City Lit, and SWWIM Every Day.