italian poets

November 28, 2013

“Her Every No” by David PetruzelliPosted by

David Petruzelli

HER EVERY NO

Maybe it’s easier to buy new clothes
rather than wash the old,

to let her boyfriend entertain himself
while she dozes on the couch all afternoon,

and now he wanders through each room,
pausing to view the cartons of old take-outs

and retrieve her underwear—all yellows
and pale blues—folding them, starting to remember.

Afterwards he sits down with that book
on ballet—once a favorite of hers

and now, it seems, of his, if only
for the black & white photos of young girls

or the endpapers marbled by hand in Paris,
and which he touches now

as if nothing found on her floor could compare.
But at five he says, “I’ll call you later,”

and even though he’s standing over her
she’ll remember his voice

as coming from the hall; her eyes closing
forgo the door’s rough kiss. She touches her face,

remembers the feel of his hand,
and that earlier she said please come over;

that she had really said please;
that he brushed one cheek as if checking for dust.

—from Rattle #20, Winter 2003
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November 26, 2013

“Ritorno” by Gianna PatriarcaPosted by

Gianna Patriarca

RITORNO

i have come back to the house
where i was born
but it is only the road i recognize
long, winding beneath the bridge
it is the smell of new grass
and the yellow mimosa in late March
that welcome me

the oak tree is gone
flattened into a driveway
the dull faded walls of a small house
have been revived by a bright melon
yellow
no more rosemary bushes
or grapevine

my cousin’s wife is polite
she offers me coffee
in porcelain cups

we sit beneath her new
covered veranda
insignificant chatter between us
she is in her fortieth year
and pregnant with her
third child

she allows me into the bedroom
where i was born
i walk in alone
to an old woman propped
in a single bed
a small television
keeping her company

i move towards her
my feet arguing each step
she stares at me
half knowing
i must be a relative
“ciao zia”

Patriarca

i tell her my name
she remembers i am her
dead brother’s child

she offers her hand
it is small
it has returned to the past
as all things do

“ti trovo bene,
stai bene vero
si, si vedo che stai bene.”

i agree
i am well

i offer her Canadian chocolates
caramel sweet
she has no teeth

i recoil in my ignorance
a little ashamed at my arrogance
my need to return to the past

this irrelevant room
where my life began
was once home

this room where my aunt
lies solitary and toothless
waiting
to go home

—from Rattle #20, Winter 2003
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November 23, 2013

“Ghost Train” by Rachel Guido deVriesPosted by

Rachel Guido deVries

GHOST TRAIN

Smoke rises industrial in puffs that look innocent
as early morning fog over the banks of the Hudson,
its filth disguised as beauty beneath shimmery sunlight.
For long moments on the train I neglect death
and poison and the lies that let them live,
more potent than love, more lethal than rage.
Oh yet so lovely, I croon, the rippling river
in winter light, snow dusting the palisades
and river banks where still graceful trees bow
as though in devotion, or prayer, to earth,
to river, to air.

*
A girl in a canoe rounds the curve
of river and life hunches in its belly,
freezing and afraid. To run
with the river once lovely. To die
in fear of fist and madness, in blurry
eyes once filmed with lust and love
like a curse curled into speech,
the sneering and snarled mouths
of some men’s anger. She stands upright
in the rocking canoe, flings her arms high,
purpled with bruises and cold, skinny
and easy to snap as a sapling’s twigs,
but free, even to drown unknown
in this winding river, full of winter’s
cold, and the chemicals of his despair.

*
Like a carnival barker, a trainman
sings of pot pie for lunch in the diner,
of the man who plucked fifty chickens
in the deep of night, of the feathers
still floating down the aisles of the train,
wispy as dandelion fluff to wish on,
looking innocent as that industrial smoke
drifting all around us, remnants
of what we’ve killed, or are killing.

—from Rattle #20, Winter 2003
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November 22, 2013

“The Litany” by Dana GioiaPosted by

Dana Gioia

THE LITANY

This is a litany of lost things,
a canon of possessions dispossessed,
a photograph, an old address, a key.
It is a list of words to memorize
or to forget— of amo, amas, amat,
the conjugations of a dead tongue
in which the final sentence has been spoken.

This is the liturgy of rain,
falling on mountain, field, and ocean—
indifferent, anonymous, complete—
of water infinitesimally slow,
sifting through rock, pooling in darkness,
gathering in springs, then rising without our agency,
only to dissolve in mist or cloud or dew.

This is a prayer to unbelief,
to candles guttering and darkness undivided,
to incense drifting into emptiness.
It is the smile of a stone Madonna
and the silent fury of the consecrated wine,
a benediction on the death of a young god,
brave and beautiful, rotting on a tree.

This is a litany to earth and ashes,
to the dust of roads and vacant rooms,
to the fine silt circling in a shaft of sun,
settling indifferently on books and beds.
This is a prayer to praise what we become,
“Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return.”
Savor its taste—the bitterness of earth and ashes.

This is a prayer, inchoate and unfinished,
for you, my love, my loss, my lesion,
a rosary of words to count out time’s
illusions, all the minutes, hours, days
the calendar compounds as if the past
existed somewhere—like an inheritance
still waiting to be claimed.

Until at last it is our litany, mon vieux,
my reader, my voyeur, as if the mist
steaming from the gorge, this pure paradox,
the shattered river rising as it falls—
splintering the light, swirling it skyward,
neither transparent nor opaque but luminous,
even as it vanishes—were not our life.

—from Rattle #20, Winter 2003
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This week’s guest on the Rattlecast is Dana Gioia. Watch it live live at 9pm EST!

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November 21, 2013

“Rapunzel” by Maria Mazziotti GillanPosted by

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

RAPUNZEL

Think what it must have been like for her, caged
in her tower, the small window cut into dark
stone, the hours it took to brush

and untangle her hair, waiting for the prince
to come so she could let down her hair
and he could climb up to her room.

Think what it must have been like for her, lonely
and starved for attention like the girls now
who stare into their bathroom mirrors, brushing

and combing their hair, applying perfume, mascara,
skin softener, make-up, all in honor of the man who
will stand outside the window, their beauty a braid they

climb up on, their lives spent, breathless and silent,
waiting for a man to rescue them as though their own
hands were not strong enough, their own hearts not

brave enough, their own minds not quick enough for
them to save themselves.

—from Rattle #20, Winter 2003
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__________

Maria Mazziotti Gillan: “Poetry is my passion—writing it and sharing it with others through my books, setting up readings for other poets, editing a magazine and anthologies, and organizing prizes. My mother always said, ‘The more I gave away, the more I had to give,’ referring to food, and I have tried to do the same thing with poetry.” (website)

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September 29, 2013

“Blazing” by Luigi FontanellaPosted by

Luigi Fontanella

BLAZING

Only the blazing matters,
the stoking of the fire,
the crackling so fierce and sundry,
its defiant start, that moment
just before
the flash, the flame, the senses
suddenly all ablaze.
To me all the rest
is boredom and disgust, gray rubble:
chilled ashes with no horizon,
a nauseating decay.
I think of the wood down in the basement,
of how much is left, how much we’ll need
to burn over the next few days,
how much dormant energy
we’ll need to draw upon time after time
to make the flame be flame again.

—tr. by Irene Marchegiani

—from Rattle #20, Winter 2003
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September 28, 2013

“For Bill Vitt” by Diane di PrimaPosted by

Diane di Prima

FOR BILL VITT

Brother, I rest on yr arm.

and the leaves do not rustle, the shadow
of hawk or vulture passes noiseless
over our heads & on up the curve of the hill.
Time of drought, but the spring-box
is still half full. Remember the green velvet
topped w/ yellow tore those hills apart
at the turn of other Februaries.

Brother, the woods or the coast

it is all one. It is not far enough.
And the wind passes, the leaves
are still, small animals rot (sweet stench)
in the ditch by the road.

Brother, this interim peace

like the soft furze—not green, not dead
on which we lie together. This
interim peace: that we need not lie
to each other. All night we turn on each other
like the moon
                          pulling the tides beneath us.

In yr arms
                  I hear no hunter
& I need no dream.

—from Rattle #20, Winter 2003
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