Excelsior Fashion Products, Easter

By D. Nurkse D. Nurkse

They pay us time and a half

and don’t dare catch us

drinking: we don’t insist,

don’t pass a bottle, but each sips

a private pint, all sitting

in the narrow room with our backs

to the center, each facing

his work—router, stain tray,

buffing wheel, drill press—

and with that sweet taste echoing

in our bones, we watch our hands

make what they always made

—rosewood handles—but now

we smile in delighted surprise

and Marchesi brings envelopes

that record a full day’s work

though it’s still noon,

processions still fill the streets,

choirs, loudspeakers bellowing

Hallelujah: and we change

into our finest clothes in the locker room,

admiring each other’s hat brims, passing bottles

freely until all are empty, and at last

we separate in the brilliant street, each

in the direction of a different tolling bell.

D. Nurkse, “Excelsior Fashion Products, Easter” from The Rules of Paradise (New York: Four Way Books, 2001). Used by permission of Four Way Books.

Source: The Rules of Paradise (Four Way Books, 2001)

Biography

D. Nurkse is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including The Rules of Paradise (2001), The Fall (2003), and The Border Kingdom (2008). His parents escaped Nazi Europe during World War II—his Estonian father worked for the League of Nations in Vienna, his mother was an artist—and moved to New York. Nurkse’s family moved back to live in Europe for a number of years, returning to the United States around the time of the . . .

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