-Timeline-

1.
In Boulder, Colorado

The mountains during twilight glow
Red-violet at their peaks,

Bluing on the slide to darkness.

From the kitchen window

Facing that way, this is the setting scene

As she washes the dinner dishes.

Everything exhales across Boulder,

In measured disposition of the day's activities.

There's a quiet nature to eventide 

Inside the house not far from the mountains.

The dishtowel wipes dry her hands

As she looks around the kitchen assuring herself

That her efforts have accomplished something meaningful.

Through the narrow hallway

To the small living-room,

He cons the television's reception

Tuning its manufactured knobs

And negotiating its rabbit-ears

In figure eight patterns as the kids

In full-faith in his abilities

Gather on the rug to stake their claims.

(He slaps the television's cabinet on its broadside

Causing a tantalizing flash of something recognizable
Through the static phosphorescence.

He knows the nightly routine like no other.)

With the dishes stacked away she looks upon

The recurring timeline of the living room

Leaning her shoulder on the wall of the hallway.

Outside, the streetlights strengthen and soon

Blanch the stars with an incandescent light

And sounds are muted.

Inside, the kitchen is dark and ready for morning as

The mountains begin their retreat

From the glancing windows of Boulder.

2.
Inside the first-floor tenement in Fall River, Massachusetts,

Boulder's evening narratives are two hours done

And as is its custom, more noisily articulated.

Outside, as seen through the parlor's windows,

The darkened ballpark across the street is two hours empty.

                                    

-lost-

my younger brother had smaller feet than my own

but he didn’t know it and frankly neither did I

so when the shoes he ordered arrived at the shoe store 

in the wrong color and style he gave them to me assuming

I could use a new pair of shoes.

like him, I wouldn’t wear those shoes
to a dance at the junkyard,

but I accepted them with the same graciousness

in which he had given them and when he left my house

I tossed the shoes into the bedroom closet never to be worn.

let’s say this happened about 30 years ago.

I don’t remember giving them away
or donating them to the Goodwill because

we all know where that would have gone,—

to the place where my brother sees the shoes

on the feet of a stranger walking into the restaurant

which means those horrible looking shoes followed me

through wherever my movements in life drifted to
for at least 30 years.

It’s nearly four days since my younger brother died

at the age of 70 in Florida and I can’t find the shoes.

I’ve looked for them, going so far as into places where
I know they wouldn't be, called everyone who might
have some recollection of them, some clue to their whereabouts,

a suggestion as to a long vacated residence

which might have slipped my mind and although
I don't require them to remember his life
the fact that the shoes are missing has become
something of a short-term exploratory mission.

they were oxblood leather lace-ups,

narrow-fit with a pointed, tortured toe
sporting the label of an unknown manufacturing company

screened to the bottom soles and inner heels

last seen being transported from one house to another,

one car trunk or another,— the cause

of the bulge in that wrinkled brown paper bag
stored out of sight in a quiet place other than here

and I hated those fucking shoes and so did my brother.

-a space-

the closet’s filled with emptiness,—

once filled with things of the body

hanging  and stacked,— things tossed into it
due to laziness or lack of decisions, 

things pressed against the dark far wall to the left
and left forgotten.

the closet’s come full-circle.

the closet was empty to begin with.

on the move and things are gathered, unhooked,
lifted from the pole running wall to wall
sagging in the middle from the weight of its mission.

all things are readied for transport,

the matters of coats, sweaters, fleeces,

slacks, jeans and shirts on hangers, items
which carry the scent of the collective,

items moved a full bridge away
spanning the river

resurrected to hang again,

whose purpose is to occupy a space—

those things in need of a pair of arms or feet,

or legs or a single head, a winter night's back,

those things with frozen zippers, buttons lost
but unto god, impossible stains, the bundled
to be tossed or pardoned,— those things in need
of another season, a solemn reprieve or the Goodwill. 

                                        Fall River / Swansea / 5/8/12

-after the holiday meal

I was drawn to the parlor where

the fraternity of work-a-day men

sat bullshitting over the outer-

movements of their labors.

particularly interesting was the way

in which they'd pay attention

to each "bellyacher's" annoyance,

a kinship formed by a fundamental

acknowledgment of the brotherhood,

each participant nodding like bobble-

headed Mussolini impersonators

employing the requisite facial expressions

with every topic under discussion

bobbing and nodding in compliance

of having been there,

the muscles of their faces

slowly contracting, dropping at the jaw-lines,

the lower lips pulling the wrinkling

chins along for the ride.

"damn kids today"...

       "that stroonce at the gas station"...

              "that son-of-a-bitch nephew of mine"...

"y' know Tony at the A & P?

wife dropped dead.

just like that.

ya never know".

ya never know.

ya never know...

and with their hands intruding

into the beltways

stopping at the heavier row of knuckles

I’d walk back to the kitchen

to look at the women

as they washed and wiped, swiped,

wrapped and stacked the remains of the day

criss-crossing one another over the linoleum

in the kitchen ensemble's tarantella finale.

through the narrow hallway,

the young newlywed gone missing

from the kitchen's frantic activity

is soon found in the parlor,

sitting on the armrest

of her husband's easy-chair,

one leg tucked behind the other,

her forearm draping his shoulder

listening intently

to the masters-of-complaint.

she listens through the smoke,
through the prosecution of the charges, 

through the sounds of heavy digestion,

occasionally adding a smile, frown,

a shake of her head or sigh

of sympathetic understanding

anxious for her husband,

the parlor's "complainer-in-training"

to offer the strength of his unique contribution,

neither yet realizing

her proper place in the system of things.

                                                   c.1951

-the beginning-

my father and my mother

met some five years before

they’d dance in each other's arms

across the linoleum floor

in the basement of the Sons of Italy Hall

on Covel Street at the afternoon reception
following their wedding.

their beginning went something like this:

he’s playing in a pick-up game

of tackle football on the outfield
grass of 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 DiNucci, four houses up
where the standing billboards at the edge of the meadow
preach colorfully of something for everyone

and with Francis in tow, she crosses the street,
standing at the fence, breast-high, to watch them play.

she is less than seventeen but not less than fourteen.

she’d seen him at other times (from her window
overlooking the street corner during twilight

when she's required to be indoors)
hanging around at the right-field fence on Stinziano
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-of-play
with his neck broken from a cheap-shot delivered
by a Ruggles Park roughneck, and the story goes:

as his teammates carry the young man
who one day will become my father
through the chain-link gate at the backstop
behind home plate and into the backseat
of crazy Charlie DePola's snazzy '36 Desoto

for a fast ride to the Union Hospital, the young girl
who one day will become my mother, climbs uninvited
and near unknown, into the front seat determined to ride along.

and this poem of their beginning is written
from the story as told to me in 1953 by Francis DiNucci DePola.


                                               Quequechan, Massachusetts

                                                              

-Cross to the rivers-

Let's cross to the rivers, the Lee

and Taunton junction; eye-line to the wall, the eastern

face of Brayton Point Station

erected on the engineered peninsular 

splitting the rivers.

Exposed beyond the tree-line, the power station
muscle’s its way through,
steam driving the great turbines and periodically,

as valves open to high-pressure, quakes

the uneasy alliance it keeps with the populace.

Daylight, and it churns and boils

and smokes coal-fired

through its great standing stacks—

More the beautiful when approached lit-up

like a cheap motel in the dead of a winter's night

from a long and lonely road.

Swansea

                                      

                                                  

-lone wolf-

again, the poem-writer sounds-off

on the singular guy who smoked

a certain brand of cigarettes when another brand

won him over until the brand that settled-in for keeps

applied its own cunning fatality ––

the man behind the wheel

of the working Buick,

trench-coat buttoned-up,

frontcloth to the blue pencil neck-tie
clipped in a plating of gold,

the material of the road,

ready to do business from the top down

from the hand out

from the crew-cut 

capped by the pliable, all day fedora

(brim like a breaking wave) ––

the guy who carried the Company's promotions
from the outside to the inside

from the crowded displays of the trunk,––
the stand-alone bathing beauty cutouts, romanticizing
beer with a smile, the neon things glowing,  
give-a-way art which hawks by brand so he didn't have to,

into the bars and restaurants from Buzzard's Bay to Orleans.

(the stagnant atmosphere of last night's beer joints
cling to his clothes, a perennial scent) 

again, the poem-writer sounds-off about the guy
who fixed things after supper,

things he didn't know how to fix,— the original

jury-rigger, knob-twister, gluer, pipe-knocker,

one wrench, one hammer, one slot-head will do,
one phillips-head held in reserve just in case,
the guy who smacked with an open hand

the broadside of anything not functioning properly,

who approached the night's phosphorescent static like a mad scientist
for the sake of better reception inside the frantic laboratory of his house.

yeah, that guy.

I had me one.

                                               Quequechan

-In the dream Emily said:

"When my poems

are read dressed as in a jingle
recited to oneself from someplace
toward the outback of the brain
compressed within the fluid around it,

the journey through them cannot begin.

Imagine my voice;

soft-spoken alto, not saccharin,

strong-willed but not carrying with it
the full weight of a sinking object.

how else would one define the impish

smirk of my mouth?

I'm not out for the pleasantness some seek in me,

and if you delve into this practice I will find you,

knock your head with a cast-iron skillet 
and bury you in the garden beneath the tangled

root of the fig tree— the fig tree at Amherst,
so lovely a spot of ground for at the least I'd say
you’ve made, albeit lopsidedly, something of an effort".

-possibly like love c.1450-

my earliest backyard faced the high,
woven-wire fence of Rachlin’s Junkyard.

my friends and I scaled it to our advantage
when building orange-crate racers

running them down the riven slopes of Healy Street.

Rachlin’s was an irresistible yet forbidden zone
of treasured gearshift knobs, red reflectors of light, rearview mirrors,
favored hubcaps and rare telescopic radio antennas,

all of which were sought-after for a presumed
psychological advantage on the speedway of Healy Street.

Maureen D'Concini's house sat well beyond the park
and across the street at the northernmost edge of the City Dump
and although she felt no desire to ever go in there, her hair at times
was perfumed in the lingering scent of something
smoldering beneath a mound of stuff once treasured.

my clothes often smelled like rusting metal
folded into the scent of a damp and tolerant junkyard dog.
he'd greet us with an exuberant tail and yips of recognition
after we'd scale the fence to stake our claims.

but I didn't have to scale a fence at the City Dump
in order to ride to Maureen D'Concini's house.
just a fast peddle over the paths, flattened by the bulldozers.

                                                                 Quequechan c.1953

                                   

   

-the no designated hitter rule-

from the old house, the ocean

is a fastball away.

well, a line-drive away.

from the roadside, the ball drops

like a sinker toward the plate;

when raining as seen in the box from the left side

it’s a natural spitter,––

legal in a ballpark like this.

in my time, with Lucia Nono in the middle of the benchseat,

we'd drive on a hot frozen rope to the beaches

and from there to the roadside stands along Route 6 for fried clams.

we'd eat them in the car and then we’d go home to change-up.

later, we'd attend a night game under the lights at the Ponta Delgada Drive-In

or take a ride out to the Narrows for a twi-night at the Reservation, where

the Wampanoag nation lived, made love, raised their young,
hunted the forest there for wild berries and plentiful game,
fished the great Watuppa Ponds, and in-between found the time

to wage a war for their existence against the malignant Whites

whom the Wampanoag people called: the "Coat-men".

It’s the pine-tar scent of the clearing

and the fragrance of fresh standing water, where
the dashboard radio broadcast the good news:

"Malzone stands in...takes ball two low and away...
evens the count at two and two...
third-bagger lined-out to shallow center in the 2nd
and doubled off the left field wall in the 5th
driving in the lone run for the "Hose"...––
Jensen steps off the bag at first...
Larsen from the stretch...the pitch..."

 -of the outside, linked to the inside-

not because both were found across the street

or that the crowded clotheslines traveled that way

or that the gas station’s leaded fumes

cloaked the atmosphere inside and out

or because the pane of the baker’s oven waited

a stone’s-throw from the supper table––

but because the distance was measured
from the inside to the outside and back again

where as nothing of the inside was withheld,

nothing of the outside was left behind.

the hallways were linked to the avenues

navigated by those of us recording the observations
as well as by those of us who weren't.

Quequechan