March 18, 2014

Patricia Fargnoli

PARENTS WITHOUT PARTNERS TOGA DANCE, CIRCA 1970s

Stardust hung over the American Legion Hall
as we headed from our car to the door,
sheathed in sheets, mid-life, pocketbooks swinging.
Something better happen, Maureen said.

As we headed from our car to the door,
and the dim gloom of the long hall,
Something better happen, Maureen said,
some man whirl us off into perfect happiness.

In the dim gloom of the long hall,
a three-piece band played, more beat than music.
Would some man whirl us off into happiness?
The women sat at folding tables waiting

as the three-piece band played, more beat than music:
Sweet Caroline, Proud Mary.
The women sat at long metal folding tables waiting.
Men stood around the bar, one leaned against the wall.

Sweet Caroline, Proud Mary.
Some couples were dancing, mostly far apart.
Men stood around the bar, one leaned against the wall.
His eyes scanned the room like twin beacons.

Some couples were dancing far apart,
we all wore togas like at old Roman revels.
His eyes scanned the room like twin beacons,
a man with a diamond on his little finger.

We all wore togas like at old Roman revels.
Maureen’s was falling, uncovering one breast.
The man with a diamond on his pinky finger—
I tried to catch his eye; I wanted him to choose me.

Maureen’s sheet was falling, uncovering one breast,
she’d had enough highballs not to worry about it.
I tried to catch the man’s eye, I wanted him to choose me.
He held out his hand and we swung out on the floor.

I’d had enough highballs not to worry about anything—
gold hoops on my ears, mascara on my lashes
as he held out his hands and we swung around the floor.
Stardust hung over the American Legion Hall.

from Rattle #41, Fall 2013
Tribute to Single Parent Poets

__________

Patricia Fargnoli: “I write poems, have written poems for over 30 years, because I hope that they will speak to the lives of others. It is my greatest pleasure to sometimes learn from someone that they have. My poem here is about the struggle of trying to juggle the roles of parenthood with the necessity of creating a new social life for oneself. I guess you could say I’m a retired single parent now since my children are in their fifties. But I raised them myself through their teens after my divorce.” (www.patriciafargnoli.com)

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May 18, 2011

Patricia Fargnoli

THE NEST AT APPLEWOOD APARTMENTS

In a pot of impatiens I hung outside my apartment door,
a house finch built her nest.
Three small eggs, white with potential.
Day after day, she huddled over them—flew off, came back,
ruffled by our passings and her instinct to protect.
Without water, the plant withered, leaves dried and fell
leaving her exposed. Still she stayed
protected by the portico from thunderstorms and hail,
feral cats in the bushes, redtails circling overhead.
When the eggs hatched we dug binoculars out to look—
we craned our necks. And I began
to think of them as my birds
as if I was charged with their protection.
How fierce that instinct was!
I might have been young again,
worrying about the safety of my children.
I feared she’d give up, abandon them.
But when finally they flew, I wasn’t there,
gone for the weekend to my grandson’s graduation party.
My neighbor told me that on the last day
both parents came to teach them flight,
guiding them through the lower air,
the young wings fluttering, unsteady at first.
And then, she said, all at once, other finches came
with their own apprentice flyers.
How I wish I’d seen it!
Nine birds at least, flying around and around
just several feet above the grass, the air alive—
a celebration of twittering and wings,
a graduation—and then, gone.

from Rattle #26, Winter 2006

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March 17, 2011

Patricia Fargnoli

FUN

Of course, when I think about fun,
I think of a man in a short buckskin skirt,
shirtless, walking down the street
of the Bridge of Flowers
with a cross-bow, a quiver of arrows on his back.
About fifty, an ordinary man
I wouldn’t have noticed
but for the crossbow and his half-nakedness–
in other words, his way of sticking out
in the crowd of tourists going by.
He was just walking, a man in a suit
walking beside him, both of them
with a sense of purpose,
both obviously on the way to somewhere.
The street slanted up a little and they bent forward
to accommodate it. That must have been
their mission that day–onward and upward.
The bow rattled on his back,
the arrows quivered.
His hair was white–if that helps.
The problem with such fun
is that nobody explains it. It enters stage left
and goes off stage right into the wings.
Then for years, it keeps going off in your mind
like flashbulbs. It takes on weight, metaphor:
Father Death, Creative Spirit.
Gosh, I wish I’d known the whole story–
I could put the puzzle to bed then–
if only I knew the meaning of it all.

from Rattle #18, Winter 2002

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January 30, 2010

Review by Lori A. MayThen, Something by Patricia Fargnoli

THEN, SOMETHING
by Patricia Fargnoli

Tupelo Press
The Eclipse Mill, Loft 305
PO Box 1767
North Adams, MA 01247
ISBN 978-1-932195-79-8
2009, 84 pp., $16.95
http://www.tupelopress.org

I am of the age when parents no longer resemble the friendly supervisors of youth. Now, with each passing year, I watch as the once lively duo slowly fades into a subtle, calm battle with time. We suffer mortality. It is what unites us. And yet, there is beauty in witnessing a life come and go. Amidst pain and suffering, we endure. We love. We fight. Sometimes for our own lives. Sometimes for the lives of others.

It is with such consideration that I find myself pleasantly drawn into the latest collection from Patricia Fargnoli. Then, Something offers an honest approach to human mortality, celebrating lives lived, banishing memories best forgotten, remembering those most cherished.

When I read the poem “Applewood Senior Apartments, April Again,” I cannot help but recall my own visits to elderly family and friends. Fargnoli draws the reader in, inviting us to see through the white walls of solitude, as a lifetime passes through shadows along the window:

You’d been told it would come to this, the turning away
into smaller and smaller rooms. The footsteps upstairs
are not anymore a husband’s, but the thin neighbor
              who comes and goes beyond your window,
his sick cat in a carrier.

We all eventually arrive at this place. Fargnoli not only takes us there, but leads us through the quiet, refined passivity of a lifetime reduced to memories:

Once, you had a life and it was sometimes good.
Your hair was auburn then, you could run.
If only your legs would move today in that remembered
             ease and rhythm.

It doesn’t matter that I am still too young to experience this as a personal flashback; I have seen the eyes of family whose youth has faded, supported their limbs when they could not support themselves, and remembered life where little remains. Life is given to us, and then slowly withdrawn. Fargnoli captures these moments of breath, of beating hearts, and challenges us to breathe life back into the stolen moments of aging.

The poet confronts mortality again and again in this stunning, perceptive collection. “Easter Morning” is a favorite, for its frankness and tongue-in-cheek reactions to strangers, readers, and symbolic figures. Again, Fargnoli’s narration admits concern

about death, how it will come too soon.
Part of me wants release
but we cling to life, most of us,
with passion — or not.

Within this poem, the observations of others, and in particular an “awkward woman,” the narrator wonders about “becoming reluctantly old” and how she “live[s] slowly these days.” It is as though there is much more to read through what Fargnoli presents to sense the line between life and death, passionate desire and comfort with ambiguity.

Fargnoli stretches beyond the immediate to recount lives lost and the impact of losing loved ones long ago. In “The Losing,” the poet resurrects and personifies a mother, if only to relive the loss:

The mother who left in my childhood
is leaving again in my dream.
[…]
My mother is leaving again from the memory
of a white double bed,
[…]
My mother left all my days and nights
and went into the illness for which

there was, in those days, no cure
and no slowing it down.

Fargnoli may dance with death in Then, Something, but this is not to be perceived as a solemn collection. For with every life lost, with each year of aging, Fargnoli offers a glimpse of that impenetrable human spirit that pushes us to carry on. Call it faith, label it as determination, there is hope in poems such as “Melancholy in Late October”:

I have become extravagant —
I have turned on all the lamps in the house —
all day I keep them burning.

Yes, I am of the age where youthful parents are but a memory. I am, myself, not quite as energetic as I was a decade ago. But through Fargnoli’s collection of perceptive, sensitive images, I choose not only to remember lives lost and years worn on, I embrace the spirit in which lives were lived with vigor.

____________

Lori A. May is a poet, novelist, and freelance writer whose work has appeared in publications such as The Writer, Tipton Poetry Journal, and anthologies such as Van Gogh’s Ear. She is the author of stains: early poems and two novels, Moving Target and The Profiler. May is also Managing Editor at Marick Press and Founding Editor of The Ambassador Poetry Project. For more information, visit http://www.loriamay.com.

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