Four Poems by Manny Grimaldi

 

I feel like a drink in the morning when I think you’re gone

 

 

which never comes. You call eventually. This  

is stuff of school-child fantasy, but now 

I am beginning to love you, it’s not about keeping you. 

The abandoned bridge, the peeling bark adorned by scarcely 

a flower recall the single place 

I never knew, where Providence hid. After 

 

burying myself in ink that winter, glad for the divorce, taking 

a two-lane highway in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, snowfall on the quivering  

thin, naked trees adorning a creek, I follow to Cinema Regal Manor  

to nod off in reclining chairs. You watch a film about imperialism  

and desert sunsets and I snore—at parting; the wind a hush  

and the trees cease their rustling, not a moment noticed,  

 

then home I walk alone at evening.  Arrived, 

I sit down at my desk to write you, and I wonder what  

you would think of my eggs and sausage, made with fennel and dill. I wonder 

if those spices agree with you, if my toilet bowl would repulse you,  

if you’d know what to do with my sprayer bidet. 

 

Two years ago, I startled at water humming by the Ohio at Turner’s Place,  

standing on a ramshackle, tumble-down pier with my friend who spoke clarity 

so gently as to never disturb the great happening joyous 

day.  He delighted in all perplexing beings 

and I wanted to cry for shame. I drank within a week. 

 

 

All rights reverted back to author, published originally in Kentucky State Poetry Society’s  

Pegasus—editor Jon Thrower 

Going Home

 

 

I think of you late,  

black hair and dimples in a discotheque—inquisitive parts electric— 

  

my static crackles—please do not let me die when you depart.  

I slept last night translating an airplane’s shadow,  

something in its way sits with me after rain ragged clouds, 

 

and I remember your last four words: merci, in Washington,  

transferring as I spend the day watching a cooing bird make a nest  

in the space between the glass and car hood— 

 

after this, she leaves  

flesh and blue spotted eggs, her feathers a pink and grey. 

In flies a partner,  

 

wings at mad flutter almost slowed—  

the considerate touch down of iced sugar on rolls, 

as I take a snow scraper, bat them off,  

 

toss the nest,  

smash every egg because  

 

this is all mine. 

 

I cry salt tears for the mourning doves. 

 

I forget the first rule in life,  

heaven is a home in a nest on the sea, 

and I am swimming in the same water.

In Roma, West Ponente

 

 

I.  

 

 

I wake up. The sound of the city roundabout fills the room, 

I can’t hear the pounding rain hitting windows,  

It is 3 A.M.  First time for monks to sit in choir.   

The thunder of the water at a glance would make promise to crack 

the glass. And hotel traffic places a candied slice 

of orange rind in my coffee service. 

 

The cars’ exhaust stoke the fiery Seraphim, who erupt  

as candles girding corners wild of the summit in the Church of Araceli 

singed singing though windows breaking, a colour and ceiling  

never settling, never settling me, where can it be 

this settling, munificent Power never resting, never seen? 

 

Surely not in bed with me.  

 

II. 

 

Stoykova said, find a word, find a door. 

I say, whisper winds, hear the words. 

We talk of moons, speak of spoons, 

wrap the world around and never find:  

from white of moon to blue, from red to new, 

pastel to oil, sketch, and marble too— 

no knives, or nets, nor oars, no proper boats for sailing. 

 

But the waters are clear where easy winds blow 

from the west across this lagoon.   

 

Surely the water will hold me.

Fishing with Andrés Segovia’s Guitar String

 

 

after reading Thomas Zemsky

 

 

Today trees change four times a year, 

hush-inducing the waft of incense by nude bramble  

over creek. Stone skips  

unaccompanied. Restless water walkers 

and toads, tails submerged, throat,  

three a happy house cat eyes  

 

for a feast, and today the time we witness 

Segovia playing classical Spanish—and a Fugue  

by J. S. Bach—the 1980s.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     His D string snaps a string bean crack—! 

 

Silent. An octopus at fervent slink 

up and down the neck proceeds aplomb with endeavour. 

 

Recall excited delight come like the city 

wrapped in tight iron nutshells, 

and similar sensation 

to pick a left-handed partner 

 

by endless swings  

of the pendulum in the library 

 

with your dominant, confident right-footed steps,  

and heels rooted, laughing, 

she peeks at the star of noon,  

her face reflects, dapples dandelion smiles on you. 

 

I forget all my reasons by her side. 

Swirlety, swish. Three points! 

Ball wiggling. A fish. 

Caught in her scope. Without a net in the keep. 

 

Limping with a split tenor string to sing.

Manny Grimaldi is a Kentucky writer with experience onstage in Shakespeare and the Commedia dell’Arte. He is presently the managing editor of Yearling poetry journal, Lexington, KY. His published work (extant and forthcoming) can be found in places such as The Rye Whiskey Review, Moss Puppy and Disturb the Universe Magazines, and Keeping the Flame Alive. He lives with two insane birds, and the dishes are never done. A current writing project involves a gender bending, ahistorical, anachronistic, geographically knackered version of Frankenstein where Mary Shelley is not only an author, but a mad scientist, who decides to write her ghost story using the body of her unsuspecting partner as raw materials in real time, in real life, told through the eyes of the eventual Creature. In verse.