-Storm of Saturn-

Route 6 and a northeast heading

toward the outer beaches

a few days out from the heavy
water of "Saturn", (the storm, not the planet)

although aside from the planet’s nasty

overdoses in hydrogen and helium, similarities exist.
on Earth, the cold is milder but in some ways, relative.
The isolation is relative, so-to-speak as we're mostly

left to ourselves, separated from planetary neighbors

by vast distances.
There are gasses everywhere.

so it's Nauset to Wellfleet where the broken
ribs of ships have long laid waste upon the land, 
then northward to Truro where
Edward Hopper had a house,—

"down-cape", but moving northward,

navigating the remnant ice-
age craters, kettle ponds, and out-washed plains

to Provincetown where winterized artists and poets,
philosophers and hourly drunkards draped
elbow to elbow upon the bar rails in conversation,

and waitresses, pleasant and unpleasant,

summer young, and winter hard, serve crustaceans so fresh

that only the day before they waited patiently under seawater
for the doom of the stern-fisher's nets or slatted pot assignments,

not far from where the humpbacks arc from the waster, and yellow-

billed herring gulls glide for whatever remains laying in wait including herring.

Destination: Race Point, the last-stand of the continent

above the shelf, and we can go no more northward nor eastward

lest we die, drowned dead, ghosting the ribs of its ships,

drowned by heavy water right here, here on Earth, not upon

gassy Saturn which is the planet not the storm.

2013

-road starts somewhere-

The potato has blind eyes

a parched skin
the scent of water

trapped inside it

and laboring the few
crooked furrows behind his house, 

my great grandfather

from the northern provinces

pulled them out of the earth by hand,

sacked them and sold them in the central
marketplace in the town of Lucca.

In her city, my mother, his granddaughter,

had the hands of fine linen,— an after-
scent of bleach and she pulled potatoes

from the bins of Maretti’s market,

corner of Bedford and Wall,
third-base side of the park,
south-side face of the church,

walked them home in their dusty
brown-paper bags,
right field of the park
across the street from the gas station where
the scent of leaded fuel danced
with the scent of simmering tomato sauce
inside the first-floor tenement where
she peeled them in the kitchen sink
under running water with a knife
blade to thumb, the cascading peels
rolling to their ends,

washed them-up, cubed them

and boiled them in either one of two pots

deep enough to require the strength of handles

paired at their sides;

the same deep pots used to cook spaghetti,
to humidify the air atop the space-heater in winter;

the same deep pots her husband, my father,
removed from the gas-stove burners, transporting
bathwater to the tub and I’m closer to home

on the road from where it was that I began.


                                                  Quequechan

-at the palms of our hands-

Trace the east-side of the working

Pepperell Mills to the fresh-water ponds
Of the great Watuppa—
Then trace the side
To the back of them northward
Moving toward the cemeteries. 
Then render the side

To the front of them southward
Into the frantic movie-theaters of
Saturday afternoons.

Indicate the sidewalls

Facing west toward the River
To the red-bricked Housing Projects
And connect the circle.

This is our testament.

Start at the tenement houses

Room to room.
Run the map through the kitchens

Pushing the screen-
Doors open to the entries at the street
Crossing to the Park, glancing
The Gas Station's pumps.

Continue mapping from behind the billboards
And through the stiff meadow northward.

Move the tips of your fingers above the slow
Rise of the hill to the Church

Staring-down our preferences from its narrow eyes
And run the line eastward to the frantic schoolrooms.

Remember: Posture, boys and girls.


Posture.
Trace a strong line south to the Ledge,

Remnant of quarried granite with its inviting
Still-water of iron waiting there to kill us,
And north again to the street, crossing
The craggy backyards laying under the green
And purple grapevines.

Elevate over the Junkyard fence beyond

The heavy clotheslines gathering
The cloth of the working class,
Crawl beneath the porches to stash our goods.—
My house. Your house.— Knock
The sour-green apples down.—

Shag the foul
Baseballs bounding into the street
Before the narrow sewers drink them up

And for the first time
Let's not question the presence

Of the neighborhood girls
When they come around with their curious
Intensions.
Let's find-out what they're up to.

I’m at the beginning;
At the palms of our hands.

Mourn our early dead;

Remember how we waited.
Let's pour into the leather-like
Booths of the Diners;

Go to the music and dance with our girls
At the bustling Halls on hot Friday nights.

This is our body.

Come on.
Let's get together, fat men.
Come on.

Let's eat lunch together, fat men,

Pray along with the droll invocation,

Pledge an allegiance,

Sing the anthem to it.
Let's present the latest vacation photos
Filed in plastic sleeves, fanning fast from the wallets.
You’ve a right to do so.
You've a right to do such things as act your ages.

Tell me that you see

This table-filled get-together shrinking
Fast in the round.—
Now, ask me something.

Ask me something. Ask me now and hear

Of how I loved you.
This is our blood.

-Congratulations and Condolences-


She’s an established artist

Worthy of her station.

What recognition comes her way from others

Has been earned through the diligence
Of her efforts.

There are days in which
I feel accomplished
At the face of something completed
As there are those in which I attest 

To feeling less than competitive.

On those cruel days I seek a voice
That moves beyond my chair and self-
Gratifications.

So I write in remembrance
Of a long-dead friend
Lacing his spikes on the stairs
To the porch of his house
Across the street from the third-base line
Between the bakery and the gas station
Below the slow hillside where the stone
Facade of the church loomed intrusively
And of what it all meant to the collective.

Empy-handed, I’ll walk to the corner store
At the behest of my father
Where I'm handed a fresh pack of Luckies
From behind the counter

To temper the recurrence of his morning
Drive eastward, as far as a Buick can travel
Without running head-long into saltwater
Telling the gentleman in the bloody
Meat-stained apron with the ease of convention:
"He said he'll pay you on Friday"—
Then inhaling the sharp scent of tobacco
Through the cellophane wrap on the slow
Walk home.
Count me culpable.

Let's start the ball rolling early in life
By smoking his brand.
She's earned her residence

Through the performance of her art.
I’m left at my station to speak of the dead.

                                          5/29/12

-the beginning-

my father and my mother

met briefly before

they’d dance in each other's arms
across the linoleum floor

of the basement at the Sons of Italy Hall

on Covel Street every Saturday night.

their beginning went something like this:

he’s playing a pick-up game
of tackle football in Columbus Park

and she sees the game playing-out
beyond the chain-link fence across the street

from her living-room window on Bedford
between the ESSO station and Marzilli’s Bakery.

she calls her friend Francis, two houses up

and they meet outside and cross the street to the fence.

she was less than seventeen but not

less than fourteen.

she’d seen him before, hanging around

the street corner during twilight at the right-field line

with his tough-guy friends, leaning

on the sweeping, heavy-metal fenders,

smoking cigarettes and swigging Cokes from the bottle.

now his buddies are carrying him
off the field with his neck broken
from a cheap-shot delivered by a Ruggles Park roughneck

and as the story goes,...

as his friends transported him through the gate
and into the backseat of Charlie Conforti's snazzy '36 Desoto
for a fast drive to the Union Hospital,  
she jumped uninvited into the front seat to ride along
and from that place in the beginning they were hooked for life.

                                                                           Quequechan

-Pictures in Motion-

He considers

The sounds of the house in early morning,

The scent of smoldering

Rubber from the law-breaking drag races
On route 24,

The screech of the spring

Expanding to the outside and the sleepy
Rides back home from the beach.

He knows the importance of reaching

The tops of the fences,—
The back-handed nab at the tongue
Of the spikes to end an inning;

The gleam of red paint as the Schwinn

Was rolled into the evening entry;
Its kickstand's early morning push to roll out of it.

He knows the spice of her mother’s Tabu,

The calm of the dance and the swish

Of his mother's sponge across the kitchen-
Table’s oilcloth

Releasing the scent of petroleum.

Call him storyteller,
Diarist, poem-writer of the after-living.
Call him

Speaker of the house, liar,— cataloger

Of the simple experience.
I'm told his earliest friends have chosen
Other points of interest.

I’m told he’s hot on the trail of something.

Adjust the sensibilities to listen in.

Turn the knob counterclockwise to shut him up.

-Portal-

                             1.
I’d vanish  

Beneath the sleight of my father’s hand.

Once there,
Once gone by its graceful mechanics where

Pictures in motion are woven by the clicking 

Gears of his magically whirling Bell & Howell.

Bathed in incandescent light, cousin Celia laughingly
Negotiates the slip of a deviled-egg
Between the unforgettable separation of her Revlon lips
And in the living room, sunk within the plush
Of the easiest chair, an ancient 

Uncle engages his Avanti,— the craggy, hemp- 

Like tobacco stick whose after-smoke saturates

The fabric of the house.

Drawing the requisite belly-laughs
From across the room’s 

Good-natured attendants, the baby’s complexion
Fades to grey as puffs of smoke from uncle’s
Deliberate mouth blanket its startled face.

There are no objections. 

There are no arrests.

This was simply the movement employed 

In everyday early childhood development.

First the smoke
Then the toilet.

Then asbestos.

                             2.

Aunt Shirley, pointing the way in sweltering
Angora pink makes the old men pant
And from the kitchen, Celia redefines

The aesthetic properties of the deviled-egg.

These are the people in motion,—
Their parts played-out

As if everything would last forever.

I was there

And I can still smell the smoke.

                                                                               

                                       Quequechan

                                            

-circle back-

cancer roamed the lungs

probing its victim beneath the still-
wrapped bed of the hospital

dropping-off its tacky prognosis

showing-up in the khaki-colored
tincture of the skin,— eye-white

slipping beneath the surface.

I looked into the face of this place.

It would have been peculiar
had he some money to leave me.
but walking from the bedside
through the uniforms
and machines of the corridor, a friend
accompanying me on the visit
opined:  “he’s had it.”

I thought:  “that’s right. he’s done for.”

back then I didn’t write anything down.

so he pops-up occasionally now in some poems,

sometimes about his ending, like this one here,

sometimes of his after-living experiences

and what might be going on as I see it.

those I like best have him on the road selling booze

and like a child with a cardboard cut-out doll,

I dress him up for the ride.

others have him alongside his young wife

inside the tenement,— the house,— the interior life

activated like releasing the taut spring of a mechanism.

but the wealth of what's left to me
are things such as these,—

the rarity within the normal,— the irresistible
everyday experience of everything there was,—
so I write it down
and I don’t complain about the money.

-Belonging to both ends of the universe-

The drive home from Horseneck Beach

Was different than the drive on route to Horseneck Beach.

On the way, it’s a race with the sun; the windows are open

And the heavy Buick, with its suspension built for comfort

Rather than stability, glides as if sailing over route 6 east

Dipping its blunted nose at the ornament with every bump

Of the tar-filled cracks in the asphalt's cadence under its wheels.

Sweet snacks, sandwiches and soda, lay on ice inside the cooler

In the trunk we can’t get to.

I think about undertows;— the kid last summer

And the ambulance that took him away, moving slow enough

That we knew he was done-for.

I fear the fierce Portuguese Man-of-War stinging the living

Shit out of me, releasing its spit of poison, and me,

Still sitting on the blanket eating half a tuna sandwich,

and dipping my free hand into a bag of potato chips.

I fear sinking like a stone from cramps
Like the kid last year they fished from the water.

We’ll get to the beach about 11:00 o’clock.

Park the car. Get the stuff out of the trunk.

We never owned a beach umbrella.

My brother’s young enough to have a pail and shovel.

My sister’s old enough to consider the sniffing boys

Who spot her like the revving engines of a hot Chevy coupe.

Fuck it! Fuck the fierce jellyfish!

I’m going in with a fast approach, bellyflopping

Knee-deep in the surf, head’s-up to keep the salt-
Water out of my mouth.

The drive home is quiet and uncomfortably damp.
Sand becomes an irritant.

The ocean’s powdered its salt across our skin.

After the baths when night closes in,
We remember that this is the place we come from.

Table's filling-up in the active kitchen.
Evening blends itself into everything. 
Floor lamps are clicked to light.

Television’s warming-up with static interference, the echo
Of the birth of the universe coming home from the beach.

Quequechan, 1953