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Written by Francis Scudellari
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Into our fun house of mirror neurons,
a favorite Fellini character strides
distorted perhaps,
but reflected clearly enough,
none the lesser for our wear.
Who is it? Which one?
It’s truly hard to decide.
It could be that brute Zampanò,
his chain unpopped,
and as ever demanding our attention...
Or the cypher, Steiner,
teetering on edge
to tell us his secrets...
Or a voluptuous
la Saraghina,
reveling in our riveted eyes...
Or gentle Giulietta,
chasing her voices,
their whispers that echo ours.
It doesn’t matter who, in the end.
Better yet, let’s take them all,
and crowd them close in.
What matters is,
we ask they try
a seeming simple task—
touching tongue to nose,
or elbow to chin—
and we watch
their attempts, together.
Strive and fail.
Strive and fail.
Strive and fail.
These are the Sisyphean rhythms
we’ll need to learn.
We have our limits,
but empathy is endless. |
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Written by Francis Scudellari
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What we were once, two words,
we are no more, taken in
When ten sticky layers absorb
the shadows of our predecessor shapes.
Purple bruises bleed through
the buried steel
Where one-hundred shouted
stories slid down into
a waiting mouth of obtuse angles.
Vague numbers now,
we follow and ask,
Why one-thousand labors
couldn’t gird us against not-
birthing gusts, their reverse alchemy,
aching to prove
How countless precious lines
can turn testily from true
geometry’s parallel paths, and seek
an improbable calculus of chaotic drips,
those splats that trace a figure
Who in the flash of flame
sees his distinctions
have lavishly become
obliterated.
Our tomorrow will know
what our today’s forgotten. |
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Written by Francis Scudellari
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How do they call you,
those who’ve passed through unmarked
twin doors for the shy
side of one century?
Is it as Nicholas
of Myra,
or of Bari,
or as an unlocated saint,
working wonders in
this home of trim white-stone
block, with three tiers of black-
arches, frowning up at
the merciless
grids behind?
Rows, rows, rows, they float on
glassy, steel-blue oceans,
and these oceans will fall in
violent, cascading, millennial
waves unlike any with foam
caps that once lapped
the rocky coast of lost Lycia--
your see
our maps don’t contain,
and our licit hosannas won’t reach.
Who are they
who pray here?
Bakers, sailors, bankers,
all whose sighs
rise with a torrent of immigrant chants
liaison rafters
fracture in echo-song,
the old coinage that plies your favor.
To which patron can they turn
when your cross crowns not
the work of masons
but one day’s
rubble,
a tongue without a bell,
the charred
relics of unnameable acts? |
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Written by Francis Scudellari
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Written by Francis Scudellari
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Still he stalks that road in Andalusia
siempre esta noche
19 Agosto
A bleached-back beast
who plays at fat habits
and gorges at ragged bone buffets
while a wobbly, hobbled silence lifts
then bounds from mound to mound
Their gently dusted humps
eulogized by one faint sound:
an insistent insect hum
Cantan las moscas,
“Aquí están
los desaparecidos”
Seventy four years ago
esta tierra roja
had a terrible thirst
First, she slurped peppery blood
Then, she chewed their salted flesh
Then, she ground down their swollen organs
Lastly, she swallowed
their still tender names
and spit up
a gray welt of trunks to replace them
Aquí, aquí, aquí
he digs, gouging out from the deformed,
hardened bellies what remains he can
to pretty himself with
the discard of another worn-out piece
Perhaps he’ll take our splendid poet’s smoothed ribs
or the natty newspaperman’s polished hip
or that meddling mayor’s sturdy jaw
His parts always need changing, but
los años perdidos
filled so by unchecked appetite
offer no shortage of substitutes
estos huesos hermosos |
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Written by Francis Scudellari
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Better or worse?
Worse.
Maybe if you massage it a bit...
Worse.
You’re beyond help’s reach.
I could squeeze it till numb, and it’d still be worse.
When did it start?
When will it stop?
You’ve got no answers?
I’ve only got questions.
Questions start the ball rolling...
I’d like it to stop.
First, try to start.
I’ll start tomorrow.
Would that be better?
No, worse. |
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Written by Francis Scudellari
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If you asked me what
it is I miss most from
an easy moving childhood,
I’d answer with the simple
toss of a pebble into thick
summer air, like we did at dusk
to trick the echo-location of bats,
and watch them twist,
circle, dive after the false
apparition of a meal.
Far from ideals, in a white-
nosed now, their winged numbers are
receding as quickly as
those innocent days when
a small stone felt like it
could work big magic. |
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