To the Thirsty I Will Give Water
Yesterday morning while I read Montaigne
a man drove his car into the Gowanus canal.
I have never seen a greater monster or miracle
than myself, Montaigne wrote in the late 16th century.
It was a bright day.
The sun forgave no one.
Not even the firefighter who first saw
the car taken by the water while he was praying,
lighting a cigarette, remembering his lover’s face—
what was he doing, what did he think of before diving in?
It is not death, it is dying
that alarms me, Montaigne tells us.
Because he swallowed enough black water during the rescue
the firefighter was given two Hepatitis B shots afterward.
The man who lost his car was given his life back.
We were given Montaigne’s heart
which is preserved in the parish church named after him
in the southwest of France.
We were given more than we can drown.
Object
Body of Water
About the Artist
Alex Dimitrov is the author of Begging for It, published by Four Way Books. He is also the founder of Wilde Boys, a queer poetry salon in New York City. Dimitrov’s poems have been published in Poetry, The Yale Review, Kenyon Review, Slate, Poetry Daily, Tin House, Boston Review, and the American Poetry Review, which awarded him the Stanley Kunitz Prize in 2011. He is also the author of American Boys, an e-chapbook published by Floating Wolf Quarterly in 2012. Dimitrov is the Content Editor at the Academy of American Poets, teaches creative writing at Rutgers University, and frequently writes for Poets & Writers.