R.G. Cantalupo

October 15, 2020

“Almost Flying” by R.G. CantalupoPosted by

R.G. Cantalupo

ALMOST FLYING

after Amichai

If, just once, we could’ve made
a flying machine, or at least
a winged creature of some kind,
gilded light as a kite over that
dark spine of mountain beyond
our bedroom window or even
floated like shadowy zeppelins
along our candlelit walls … But
whenever we tried we fell deeper
into the black hole of our bodies,
became spiders, beetles, worms,
rootbound things burrowing
inside the belly of earth, hungry.
No, even our best design—the one
we kept coming back to—looked
more like a grasshopper than
a bird. Still, for almost an hour,
we could be happy like that, bounc-
ing from shoot to shoot, my thigh
rubbing madly against yours, now
and then a sound rising, a high note
made of friction, a cricket-like song.

—from Rattle #13, Summer 2000
Tribute to Soldier Poets

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R.G. Cantalupo: “I’m a full-time writer these days. I seem to have more desire now than ever, and am getting younger every day.”

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February 13, 2020

“Black” by R.G. CantalupoPosted by

R.G. Cantalupo

BLACK

Before God or light. When my name was still
a riddle buzzing inside my father’s head
and rainbows only streamed thru my dreams.
There was black. Me in a black sack, in a belly,
a body, a home. Or out walking, bouncing up
and down like a beach ball in the dark.
Black hole, black hole, in an unborn soul,
even my hunger was filled with shadows,
gray shapes in the unlit bathroom where
my mother hid from our violent tenement,
sang “Rock-a-bye-baby” to keep me safe. Inside.

Black was the soft fur outside my bedroom window,
the moon sliced in half by a telephone pole,
black’s panther eye. Black, the pocket of sleep
I slipped inside to wake like a lost penny,
the dark, glittering glass four stories over
Brooklyn where my nude boy’s body turned wild.
I was the blue-black eagle, the coal-black bear,
the luminous, ice-black oak. My arms reaching out
to touch streetlights or stars became translucent branches,
my palms gathered voices like rain—Puerto Rican,
Italian, Colored, tire whines and horn barks,

steel squeals from the El grinding up King’s Highway,
sound rushing up thru the night’s roots into
my heart, beating against me like a black drum
till I opened my mouth and learned to sing.

—from Rattle #8, Winter 1997

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R.G. Cantalupo: “I’m a full-time writer these days. I seem to have more desire now than ever, and am getting younger every day.”

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February 6, 2020

“Red” by R.G. CantalupoPosted by

R.G. Cantalupo

RED

I know there were other colors in my early years—
yellow daisies wallpapering the kitchen walls,
blue fish swimming across my bedroom ceiling—
but what I remember most about my youth
are the many shades of red. Ruddy-red
my father’s cheeks as he bent to give me
a sip of beer. Crimson-red my mother’s face
stained by his palms. Burnt-red my brother’s ass
welted from the belt. Blood-red drops
on the bathroom floor. Fiery-red words
raging thru the Brooklyn project halls.

Even after we left New York, a red shadow followed us.
It shaded my Uncle’s eyes as he met us
in Los Angeles, the dark-red of depression,
the black-red of his future suicide. As I got older,
I began to crave red like chocolate, became lost
without it. I smeared it on high school noses
with my fists, raced thru suburban streets in
fire-red cars, chased women wearing hot-red
dresses, fought Asian-red enemies in Vietnam.
White days I lit on fire. Black nights
I opened the veins in my eyes.

Red sun in the morning, red moon in the evening,
red flames igniting every day I survived.

—from Rattle #8, Winter 1997

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R.G. Cantalupo: “I’m a full-time writer these days. I seem to have more desire now than ever, and am getting younger every day.”

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November 2, 2019

“Fishing at Hermosa Pier” by R.G. CantalupoPosted by

R.G. Cantalupo

FISHING AT HERMOSA PIER

Sam says he comes to get away from
the missus, a few hours gazing into
the sea’s gold scales and he’s gone, not
even her all-night binges can pull him
back for a week or two. José brings his
whole family and tells me, in Spanish,
they can smell El Salvador in the blue
salt wind. Alma, his esposa, who “don like
the fish,” hands out burritos and café,
and later, las dulces made from cactus.
Pedro, his oldest, learns how to set an
anchovy head on a hook. I come alone,
bring my long pole and a unfinished song,
leave the books behind. Enough to read
the wind on the sea the way Aunt Elsie
read my palm when I was a boy. Words
don’t tell much anyway. To know the bones
of a thing you have to go down deep, down
to where the seagrass roots and even debris—
a coke can, a boot, a purse—can be a crab’s
nest or a trap. You have to love going home
with your burlap empty, clouds no longer
clouds but white lilies bobbing in the sky,
the music inside the words sounding
thru you head. I open my palms. Catch
whatever I can. Whistle to lure my song.

—from Rattle #11, Summer 1999

__________

R.G. Cantalupo: “I’m a full-time writer these days. I seem to have more desire now than ever, and am getting younger every day.”

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May 9, 2011

“Igloo” by R.G. CantalupoPosted by

R.G. Cantalupo

IGLOO

Perhaps merely the idea of whiteness draws us,
the way the white lines, the fissures of ice,
the made structure itself disappears inside

the silent depths. Or perhaps the way the wind
dies down to a muffled growl as we slip inside
the white skin of bear, the belly of the moon.

Or the way we are left then with only language,
our voices heard in the white dome of the cosmos,
our stories flickering in the fire; left with merely

these shadows written on the walls of snow.
Here, the trick of permanence. There, the illusion
of stilled water, the gift of holding river and storm

quiet in the rough texture of our hands. No day
now. No night. The vast turquoise sky not changing
to a black mask pricked with eyes. Out of the flames

gods come, spirits, ghosts bearing visions and
old battles. Out of the white nothing, we create
the living light, the universe of blood, a new world.

—from Rattle #26, Winter 2006

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