-Cynthia behind the billboards-

The scene setting has

Columbus Park on Bedford Street,

Wall Street to the left and Marzilli’s Bakery.

Next to the Park on its right is Stinziano street,

Then Whitey’s Esso station.

Next to Whitey’s, three ground-
Standing billboards, Marcucci’s Bakery,
And the Marconi Club.

Behind the Tenement houses and near them,

Clumps of woodland and meadow sit austerely
And the Junkyard rusts in the metal of its occupation.
The Projects are noisily occupied.

The neighborhoods have marked their lines

Of demarcation.

The great Textile Mills foot-
Printing the landscape in granite,
Smoke at their stacks,—

Pour of the city’s sweat and its working mettle.

The Catholic High Schools, the city’s Four Sisters,

Are revolving with their girls,
And from the Dominican Academy,
Cynthia Laranjeiro shows up.

That’s how you make a planet.

Whitey’s drunk.

He stumbles from the Club and falls on the pavement.

His wife is called and she collects him as she’s done before,

Driving him home over the river in a new Mercury.

The sharp grass is more than ankle deep.

The burs of the weed stick fast to my socks.

The lattice of the bases cover our tracks.

But the small landings behind them is all we need.

The Park’s too active for the dugouts.

Whitey’s passed-out across the backseat

Of the Monterey heading westward toward Somerset.

The bells of the Church from beyond left field
Toll to alert the faithful,

And Cynthia Laranjeiro, bright from the Dominican,

Is carefully folding her sweater on the landing
Behind the billboards.

                                

                                      Quequechan, 1958


                                      City, 2011
                                   

                                                  

-the pantry-

the pantry made a more practical case for being

than the parlor.

one small window at the end of its narrow interior

was all that was needed.

the parlor was closed to us as if an investigation

was in progress.

when we did venture into the parlor it was like a violation.

we’d leave our snacks behind before entering.

you need a good reason to enter the parlor.

the pantry had petrified jam speckled on the walls.

It had that little chrome strip running along the edge

of the counter like a belt holding everything in place.

they'd wake members of families in the parlors.

that didn’t happen at our house.

but in the pantry, the mouse with its head in the trap

behind the little latched door under the counter
where the cleaning poisons were stored
and the pipes gurgled, and that was good enough for us.

my mother would lament: “poor little thing” as my father

lifted the tension of the fatal spring-bar off its neck,

pinch-grip the animal by the end of its worm of a tail,

then toss it into the backyard for the cat's afternoon performance

attended by me, a few friends and a cousin or two.

   
                                                                 Quequechan

              

-A click away-

It gets more difficult with time. 

I tell myself not to look

But each morning over tea and crumpets,

Over Bach Oratorios, and Oreos

Split in half like cymbals just after impact,

Under the canopy of stucco, two bulbs out, 

In all kinds of weather, I go to Facebook.

I see that someone has posted
A Poussin landscape with figures.

Two of the figures are seen in the foreground
As they carry the dead toward burial.

Responders to the post opine

With intelligence, emotion or by simple
But effective "likes" which allow for their inclusion
Albeit in the most fundamental opinion allowed.

I'm glancing out the window considering

The Portuguese guy across the street

As I have nothing to add to the discourse on Poussin.

It's the posters who drive the conversation

And each is driving a fast car, leaving me in the dust.

Across the street, the guy is yelling up to his wife
Who leans out of the tenement's third floor window

Just to the left of the pulley which holds a taught line.

He’s in the yard, it’s starting to rain
And the wind is building.

He’s aggravated and she’s imploring aggressively.

A bed-sheet has half-

Fallen from the clothesline and is tangled

Tightly around the top of the line’s pole.

She can’t pull the sheet in by the pulley
While it’s wrapped-up like that

And he's in no condition to climb.

He pokes at the sheet with a broomstick.

He slaps at the sheet with the head of the broom.

She’s screaming in Portuguese:

“Ir-para Casa! Sopish Caldene!”—

And it’s raining like hell.

The sheet’s too heavy, waterlogged
Like a genoa sail skimming a heavy sea,

And returning after a quick piss, I notice he’s gone.

The yard's empty and the storm continues.

His wife has closed the window

But the torn sheet’s a lost cause,
Its one free corner, flapping violently in the wind

Like a torn spinnaker.

Later, as the vinyl siding drips, I'm left to ponder

Whether or not they're eating together
In front of the television,

If he ever sees her as he once saw her,

If she remembers the man
Who vowed at the altar to always be there
And maybe this is why I can't spend time this morning
Considering Poussin on Facebook.

                                     Corner of Bedford & Eddy, Fall River.

                                             

            

-for Peter Pieronini in Purgatory-

The alter-boys at Holy Rosary Church

were not sexually abused.

Old-man Father Pannoni was a quiet study

with a sweet smile and stinging backhand

to the wise-cracking mouth.

His predecessor, Father Diafario was a young,

regular guy kind of priest, a Hollywood priest,

a Pat O’Brien type who rationalized that his presence alone

would be enough to save the Eastside kids

from the older hoodlums who’d slip us
a couple of cold quarts of Bohemian Beer out the side door
next to the Bocce alleys

of the Marconi Club, the neighborhood watering hole
on Bedford Street.

My uncles drank inside then played the alleys

and my grandfather did the same before them.

The fat, cigar-smoking DiCarlo twins took the bets.

Drunk as skunks, all of them, the wine-filled old

and beer-bloated young, played with steady hands

and dropped a light kiss on the mouth of the pallino.

This was a sight to see.

Diafario was awkward in sports.

Especially basketball, palming the dribble

with annoying slaps of a flat hand.

We’d open the lanes for him.

He jumps two inches from the blacktop

landing flat-footed while the ball simply

goes up and down nowhere near the hoop.

It was ugly.

At the Bocce alleys,
the Italians are patient with time on their hands,

like planets revolving around their Sun. 

                                   

                                            Quequechan

-the good earth-

she has managed the root cellar with care.

it’s a working place where vegetables

pulled from the soil of the garden

cultivated behind her house nestled at the foot

of the northeastern Appalachians are stored after harvesting.

the dirt floor is rich and moist. the walls are moist,

and the air is moist.

dank is the root cellar.

the cellar at 1017 Bedford was different in its yield.

the black,— hard-packed dirt of its floor served
as stark foundation, setting the place for the coal-
fired furnace, barrel-shaped, plastered and crackling
through the winter.

the air is exhaling the stale
blandness of mold and the dry-
bitter scent of home-pressed red,

fermenting in a cask of long undefined wood.

the spiders have the same dispositions.

walk down the five crooked step-stones

to the underworld of my grandfather.

this is the cellar at 1017 Bedford.

                                quequechan

-Italians in the basement-

Thanksgiving, and the family gathers.
They enter the house, family by family,
and as they walk inside,
I can hear the warm greetings
from the basement where we'll eat.
It's where the kids gather to run around
going nowhere.
Immediately, the women are drawn together
considering the courses of the meal.
They begin to set the great tables.
The men mingle in small groups,
usually tiered by age.
There's a visible level of respect displayed
along with a visible level of separation.
Age to age, gender to gender.

The women have cooked for days,
in this, the young and the old.
The two long tables in basement are covered with freshly
laundered top-sheets holding the eclectic dinnerware
filled with steaming working-class miracles.
Conversations are animated,
fundamentally Old-Country in their practice,
whose gestures are always magnified at holiday
family get-togethers.

My lovely cousin Shirley has a daughter

who asks if there is life after death.


She’s six,
and where did this question come from, they wonder.

The old folks run for cover like they’re on fire.

Sitting at my desk this early morning years away,
writing acceptance speeches just in case,
I see my enchanting young cousin

begin to swallow her tongue in the face
of her daughter's inquiry.
Shirley is a first cousin once removed.

The tongue is the fatty, drenched, tasting muscle,

necessary for pronouncing “T”s, and helpful with “U”s.

The tongue is a tool used in mocking, dislodging

food particles stuck between teeth, licking the lips

and moistening the labia.
This assists a planned penetration.

But it's mostly employed in and of itself,
for the love of it.

That’s when her eyes closed lazily.

That’s when you learned of commitment,

and she assumed the same.

That’s rather an academic way of putting it.

But my thoughts are of Thanksgiving as we gathered

at the teeming tables in the basement
of my Aunt Ann's and Uncle Frank’s house
on King Philip Street in the south-end of the city,
which as kids we referred to as going “Down the Globe.”

Everyone’s living.

The tongue also sticks out of your mouth

when you die.

It just slips out and hangs there in the open

like it’s longing for a last, sweet breath. 

But the child is asking of matters after-life.

Shirley is a smart young woman. Brandeis, I think.

The child is looking to her with the expression

of a reptile frozen at the end of the branch of a tree

waiting for the Sewing Needle to pass its way.

The reptile ignores the beauty and goes for the movement.

Its tongue is much longer than ours, is sticky,

and rolls out of its maw with lightning precision.

We usually take our time with our tongues.

Arms and hands are flying over the tables.
Nothing's rejected.
Nothing has to be tasted first.

Shirley looks like the Dragonfly

Doomed in its beauty.

I remember as a kid in the basement staring at her legs.

She answers carefully, lying like a trooper.

The child sips chocolate milk, half-spilled

over her wedge of pumpkin pie, listening to her mother.
The child is planning her attack.
Cousin Shirley is gaining momentum

veering from the trap of the common child
toward open air.

But the child’s swift tongue finds its mark.

“Then what about Santa?”


The dry reds are open and breathing their last breaths.
Old Uncle Octavio is fast asleep
on the easy-chair near the furnace,
burning-up half his face like Mercury.
The tables are emptying slowly. The men don't have to work.
Cousin Shirley is whispering: "Sweetie, eat your pie." 

One Christmas past;— A gathering, a feast, a child's inquisition
and a great pair of legs.
Shirley is a first cousin once removed.

I can't ignore the movement nor the beauty.

                                                  Quequechan

-what we think of what we use-

there are treasures to be found
all over the house,—

in every closet, every drawer.
impenetrable, cracked, dark-
green planes of the shades
cover the windows
when the streetlights go on.

no hot water but that
which is potted and drawn
from the kitchen sink,
placed upon the burner and transported
to the tub.

eggs are delivered to us in the morning
fresh enough that chicken-shit
and straw from the coops dot the shells
in muted yellows and greens.
ice is delivered too,—
and coal to fire the furnace,
pushed down the chute at the narrow
window below the tenement by the shovel
of a dust-covered laborer
into a waiting bin in the cellar.

there are brooms to reinvent
from sweeping to swatting

and the heavy-patterned paper
is damp and stained, plastered
to the horse-haired walls.

the "looking-glass radio," as my sister
defined the television set, is busy

with the earliest activity,

the growing pains of the cosmos
hissing in the backlight at the time
when everything was being made.

there are spools of thread to unwind,
lifted from the metal
cookie-pan filled with them.
the treasures of my young mother,—
the confiscated implements
of our new inventiveness.

mercurochrome
sits like an angel of mercy
in the medicine cabinet
ready to cure our wounds,
paint our faces, or fill
the curiosity of our nostrils.

cans of Campbell's soup
are readied to be employed
for street games, and as headlights
for the orange-crate racers.

if the soup cans are full, and the need is great,
we’ll empty them, clogging the sink.

there isn’t a level floor in the place,—

in the house, our tenement, where all of life
is played-out,—

where the chain of the high toilet-tank
is repaired with wire

holding the links in place at three points.

Its wooden handle sometimes
swings lazily like a pendulum in waiting,—

swings as a whisper
for no apparent reason.
It’s shaped like a narrow pear

and it’s chipped near the top, at the little
brass cap where it meets the chain.

they're all chipped like that.
all the toilet-chain handles
all over the city. 

but in a wind, the small
skylight's pane of glass
above the bowl will rattle,

sending shivers down the spines of sitters.
so this is why the pendulum swings.
it swings for thee.

then the secret things behind the flower-
print curtain under the toilet's sink
expose themselves.

these utensils belong to a different universe,

a dark side with its winding
tubes and menacing nozzles

and pads of every description, mostly

used for things of the blood.

had I known, I'd have run,
screaming for my life.

plungers are employed everyday.
orange for regular clogs,—
the big black one reserved when muscle-
power is needed.

plungers made things work again.

they free the sinks of chicken noodle soup
sitting like a paste in the gully of the pipe.

plungers made the water go down.
made the world go round.
we'll hide all the stuff we nab

under the porch.

my sister is sitting on a fucking gold mine.

she and her friends from the Academy
use the things of her bedroom in ways
I’d never have dreamed of.



                                      Quequechan