February 2019
Marc Alan Di Martino
marcdimartino@gmail.com
marcdimartino@gmail.com
Having grown up on the East Coast of the United States, I currently teach English as a foreign language in Perugia, Italy. My work has appeared in Rattle, Gravel, the New Yorker and many other places. I hope to one day publish a little book of my poems.
This poem was suggested to me while watching my daughter and her friend playing among the smoking ruins of neighborhood fireworks. Where we live, people set off their own outside their homes, in the streets, cheap and awful-smelling contraptions that create a haze and sting the eyes. But the girls' curiosity was as if an alien spacecraft had just crash-landed in the backyard. That interested me more than the bright lights.
This poem was suggested to me while watching my daughter and her friend playing among the smoking ruins of neighborhood fireworks. Where we live, people set off their own outside their homes, in the streets, cheap and awful-smelling contraptions that create a haze and sting the eyes. But the girls' curiosity was as if an alien spacecraft had just crash-landed in the backyard. That interested me more than the bright lights.
New Year’s Eve
Tonight we watched the lanterns rise
up through the black and flinty air
as neon blossoms lit the skies.
We squinted in the smoky glare
of cheap contraptions struck & burned
like matchsticks in the littered street.
A pinwheel sputtered, lifted, turned
about, a pyrotechnic feat
of ancient alchemy - it flew
a foot or two, then comically
crashed in a plot of grass, where two
children approached it cautiously
as if it were a UFO
portending unknown auguries
or sizzling in the afterglow
of unavoidable demise.
New Year’s Eve
Tonight we watched the lanterns rise
up through the black and flinty air
as neon blossoms lit the skies.
We squinted in the smoky glare
of cheap contraptions struck & burned
like matchsticks in the littered street.
A pinwheel sputtered, lifted, turned
about, a pyrotechnic feat
of ancient alchemy - it flew
a foot or two, then comically
crashed in a plot of grass, where two
children approached it cautiously
as if it were a UFO
portending unknown auguries
or sizzling in the afterglow
of unavoidable demise.
© 2019 Marc Alan Di Martino
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