January 2024
John L. Stanizzi
jnc4251@aol.com
jnc4251@aol.com
Bio Note: I've just released my 14th book, a book of free verse, my first in a long time. I wrote Chants, a memoir in sonnets. Then came POND, a one year project. I walked to our pond every day for one year (NEVER missed a day). I'd then write a four-line acrostic using P. O. N. D. Lots of photos in this book - all mine. Then Feathers and Bones, a hybrid "call and response." The call poem is a "Garland." The response a "Ghazal." In Viper Brain, I decided to look down more than up, hence the darker feel. I thank all of my V-V neighbors. Peace and Blessings. Give thanks.
Among my finest skills is the one that allows me to forget. For example, I can simply erase from my mind the fight in the kitchen, the one where you held the knife. You. Not me. I can allow the malicious remarks to remain embedded under my skin, their pain becoming part of whom I’ve become, though I’m not at all certain who advanced the first challenge, where or why… …and what difference anyway. The air we breathed so unconsciously has become a crazed windstorm that continues to to grind around us so closely it gashes our skin, forcing us to conceal our bodies as well as we can, and stay inside. Eventually it will own many of us- it is selfish and deadly and lacks a conscience, although whatever scraps of torn up metal you discover are, therefore, yours. Feel free to use them as weapons. Oh, my children, the time has long past for you to take my quivering hand and guide me across this decoyed landscape of brightly colored treachery- a bad dream, a dazzling dale colliding with the sky, and with every day that dashes by us its colors become more washed out, replaced by an affliction we cannot see. What is there to look at now anyway on this battleground of parental perpetuity? I shall engage the gears of amnesia which will move the children to safety, and replace them with a replica of a golden ship laboring boldly across the turbulent sea, and I’ll call out, It’s too late to fix it! I’m sailing back to the beginning, the very beginning, and I’ll take it from there. From the beach a very long way off, you tried to hear the sound of my voice above the sea, which gradually became a part of the sound of the sea roiling as I screamed out to you irreconcilably This is the darkness at the very end of the walk, the tide bubbling up around my knees.
Red Leaf
A certain nobility is implicit in saying what I don't believe and hoping you believe it. —Terrance Hayes On the first day of August, summer committed self-immolation as an objection to being appointed the fiery one, the one whose simple presence makes even the hearty run for cool cover. We’re sitting on a blanket on the shore of Lake Wangumbaug. You are crowing and critiquing. I’m trying to delete the white noise of your bravado as you gloat about the heat- The hotter the better! That’s what I say! This is just like the climate in my country. No problem. You do not see me roll my eyes, though I probably should have let you see them, just to show you that you are not the only one who can spew pretense. I watch the confluence of sweat course down your chest, your back, your face. I recognize all that blather about the heat not being that bad- as an act to impress, and I suppose that, because I have a small bookcase propped up in my heart set aside for when I feel someone is deserving of an act of kindness, I say, Shall we head back to the cottage? It’s cooler there. The closer we got to the cottage the more anxious you seemed. You said, It’s goddam hot out there. For a second I thought I would burn to death. As you spoke, I caught sight of one red leaf, a flame of summer’s final bloody cough, hanging there in the midst of a great green collage of shiny maple leaves. and I thought, I know! I’ll change the topic. Look!, I said, there is one red leaf hanging onto to that maple that is still green and lush. You looked, silently. I said, You know what that means, right? It should make you happy. It means the whole frigid world is rolling toward us… …wind, snow, ice… No stopping it. Not even the frozen dead will be able to stand up and confront this brute.
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL