Ilona Martonfi’s most recent poem to appear here was “Die Fledermaus (the bat)” (August 2016) 

A Man on Puget Sound
By Ilona Martonfi

Mártonfi József  June 20, 1948 – June 4, 2015

Unkempt dune sand
shuttling the voiceless
elegy of lament
that I want more.
Little brother Joe
barefoot in marram grasses
singing the lost love
your children still exiles
your Magyar ancestors
haunt Puget Sound
the undesirables:
marshes and bogs
cranberry fields
river otters, deer, muskrat
memories of a tombstone
forests with fungus and moss.
Travel far to bury you, Brother.
Rare long-distance phone calls
collage edges in fragments
pages bearing no numbering
summer comes everywhere
moored in Westport, Washington
the last outpost of the coast
boxes of black fishing hooks
carry your flight from the law
living on a houseboat
disappeared long before
the tide’s way out. Far out at sea
freshwater and saltwater mix
the islands are below us.