Five Poems by Angelo J. Letizia

 

Salvation’s Pedagogy

The procession of locusts

Marches from a box

This pestilence

In transit

With fratricidal thoughts consummates in

Grammar and phantoms

And cycles of narcissists

In a desert not yet created or dreamt

 

But

 

There are bludgeons

and hammers

and shovels

To build this desert

this new penitential suburb

We just need the courage

To wield these holy instruments

And we must be taught how

 

 

 Accountability

Convex Osiris

Bends resurrection into scraps

Exchanged for tyranny

In order to exact a satellite

Where the burst signals

Reign like confetti

We don’t need them anymore

We are all the teachers

New circuits glimmer

In the carcasses of the old

The new circuits finally integrate

Name and thing

But it is a bond which does not hold

It shrivels

To hymns and hospitals

And curricula

 

 

Auto

I am afraid of my car

The inside I mean

Its like entering a mouth

Seat belt teeth

Ready to digest

I can be eaten

Ground

Human fuel

Skin bone blood become one

Become octane

Burnt clear in the gas tank

This metal beast is craving me

In my dress shirt and tie

Sometimes I want

To surrender to this red demon

This metal demon

And all the evil things of daily life

Become their fuel

Burnt to atoms and vapor

 

 

Transparent Universe

It is sunny

Autumn air brushes by

As I stand on this ground

but

the ground begins to grumble

Like an alien stomach

And from it rose

A toothless angel

With crimson eyes

It stood in the rain

Begged me to believe in its

Blood stained robe

And propped halo

I said no

Not anymore, I was done

Tried to hide behind my solid car

An aluminium beer can

I crawled under my teacher’s desk

But all these things became transparent

Floated away like smoke

Left me a victim

In the angel’s sight

In this universe of steam

Where every solid atom

Disperses

And offers no protection to me

I am a soaked statue in a fetal ball

Waiting to be born

From this womb of a transparent world of smoke

Into that angel’s heaven

Of dentists and dry cleaners

To restore his holy form

But I do not want to go

 

 

Stillborn acorns

Where are all the gods?

Starving and pitied now

The saints are building fences

Their whiskey is almost gone

Memory is a country

Where relics go to die

The experts are asleep

And the professors have nothing left to write

There no more awards to give

There is only an exhausted and lonely end product

Of this indifferent evolution

Monotonously washing dishes

My name is Angelo J. Letizia. I am currently a professor of education at small college in Northern Maryland. I am submitting five poems. My work has been published (or is forthcoming) in a number of literary outlets including Tales from the Moonlit Path, Bewildering Stories, The Atlantean, Sirens Call, Red Planet, AHF Magazine and Bowery Gothic to name a few. I also have two books of poetry forthcoming with Silverbow press The Starry Devil and Other Unwanted Poems (2021) and The Pilgrims of Infinity (2022). Thank you for your time and consideration of my work.