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[Chanting for dollars we called it] ​​

 

Chanting for dollars we called it, at the student union you might

be shining-eyes-invited to their meeting where a four word mantra

guaranteed any door to open. In Guatemalan poncho knocked

Brent & other sidekicks to ask if I'd like to lick an acid

 

tab & go howl like wolves in the woods. The woods, our minds,

like toys. Hempy pages spilled gospel of Alpert a chemist who went

spinning on synapses into the fractal sky above Harvard. Came back

as Ram Dass & here we were Being Here Now where it emerged

 

they'd been sitting all along in South Asia completing finger-thumb

circuits. I folded my burlap body into his suitcase. Got on my breath's

pedals, wobbling. The sun set, winter powdered down, glassed

the sidewalks. Ten or twenty million breaths later, Brent, same

 

poncho, on Telegraph. Staring through Tarot cards like through dirty glass.

Brought him home, fed him. Covered my father's shower with grime.

 

 

 

 

Dan Alter is the author of two collections of poetry: My Little Book of Exiles (Eyewear, 2002) winner of the Cowan Poetry Prize, and Hills Full of Holes (Fernwood, 2025). He is also the translator of Take a Breath, You’re Getting Excited (Ben Yehuda, 2024), from the Hebrew of Yakir Ben-Moshe. His poems, reviews and translations have been published widely. He works at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at UC Berkeley. 

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