John L. Stanizzi Verse-Virtual 2016 February

February 2016

The two poems in this edition of Verse-Virtual were written as part of the Tupelo Press 30 Poems in 30 Days Marathon Challenge, which I accepted. Nickel Bag was written on January 3 and Whisky Sonnets was written on January 6. Yes, I am looking forward to February 1. This has been a wonderfully grueling challenge, and I've not missed a day!

Nickel Bag

I had directions.
Go over the bridge.
Take the first right on Pleasant.
Park.
Ask one of the kids
playing in the street
for Hector.

I was 16,
had just gotten my license,
was driving my father’s car.

Pleasant Street was a short street,
four tenements on each side,
a dead end,
a few kids running around.

I got out of the car.
The street was silent and empty,
no parked cars except
my father’s white Chevy station wagon,
and the 3 or 4 kids
in slow motion in the road.

The night was the color
of a street whose lights
had been shattered.

I held my 5 dollar bill in my fist,
crossed the murk,
and went around back
of the third house on the right.

Fifty years later
and I still cannot un-see what I saw.
A ponderous living room chair
flat on the tiny back stoop two steps up,
an enormous chair
nearly as big as the stoop itself,
upholstered with stains and night,
its squat wooden legs sawed off
or broken off.

A frayed, legless man,
small as a child and hard,
sat in the massive chair,
each pant leg tied in a fat knot.
Two gaunt dogs were asleep
on the first step,
and sitting on the railing,
three scrawny specters
the color of filthy wife-beaters
and despair.

I stood before him,
insignificant underling,
and no one spoke
until some primitive language rose in me,
some inherited TV knowledge,
and I quietly said, Nickel.

He held out a scrawny hand,
and I reached across the dogs
and gave him my five.
In return he handed me
a tiny plastic bag
the size of my thumbnail,
and that was it.

The dogs hadn’t moved.
The men on the railing hadn’t moved.
The gloom hadn’t moved.

And I left confused,
baffled by what I held in my hand,
and thinking I’d come all this way
with my mother’s money
and my father’s car
only to learn that
I didn’t really understand
any of this yet,
didn’t even want what I had come for,
wanted my five back,
wished the little plastic bag
was so much bigger.

Whiskey Sonnets

not humility
or rest
or a warm coat
not promises
not anger
nothing will change this
not now
it’s 8 degrees
both bottles
are empty
it would be simpler
to tell you
what doesn’t hurt
waiting

*

how inevitable
disappointment
the mountain
of years
grief on
every peak
no strength
to stave it off
in the morning
in the morning
everything
will be
all right
how long that excuse

*

bless the handful
of readers
bless them
and bless the shed skin
its ashes
by the door
and the storm ceaselessly
menacing the hills
tonight I won’t sleep
I’ll think all night
I’ll get up early
work all day
make something
true of me