Motif

Category: Poetry

  • October Diptych: Poetry

    October Diptych: Poetry

    1. HER WEB

    It looks like a wheel of diamonds you said. My eyes moved to the corner of the porch where you had noticed the spider, bigger than any I’d ever seen, finishing a hoop of her web. A barn spider, an orb weaver, you said. Harmless to us, despite the look of her, the size of my palm. Dew from the morning glittered around her as a braid of awe and fear wrapped around me. When you picked me up from the little station in your truck it felt like the start of a film, horror or comedy, and even more so as we pulled onto the long dirt lane leading up to your covered porch. A few miles had passed between this house and the last I had spotted on the road. I was just off the train from the city and couldn’t slow my thoughts to match your quietude. I was out of my element, clean and awkward, unnatural against the copper trees and lack of human sound. On the porch, the wind rose and made a soft rush through the woods around us, moving our hair. I had leaned in closer when the web flickered in the changing air, and my instincts jumped me backwards from the spider, knocking me into your chest. You righted me by the shoulders with both hands and held me there. Your closeness felt sudden and encompassing. The feel of your chest against my back. My nerves, untensing against your solidity. I was alone with you, like I had wanted. Finally, I was sticking to your world. In my memory, I can hear our hearts beating. Cicadas, wind, scurrying. The quiet was so loud, so alive. “Scared?” you asked softly, amused. I shook my head, lying, still looking at the spider but thinking only of you. Maybe it was then that you said a storm must be coming as the sky churned above us.

    Maybe then you led me by the hand into the darkening house. I remember, more clearly, the storm itself and how hard it fell against the roof, muting our sounds through the night. I remember the web was still there outside in the morning, holding on by a thread. The roof held firm through the dark hours, absorbing the force of wind and water so completely that the violence outside softened into something almost comforting, a barrier between the wildness of the weather and the stillness we shared indoors. In moments like that, protection feels less like a feature and more like a presence, something you only notice because it does not fail. Over time, that unseen role becomes part of the rhythm of a place, much like the spider’s web persisting after the storm, shaped by care and resilience. It is this quiet reliability, reflected in the principles behind Lee’s Roofing, that turns a structure into refuge, allowing life beneath it to unfold uninterrupted, even when the sky churns and releases everything it holds.

    2. THE BEE

    I’m out walking in the cool, quiet fog somewhere between night and morning. The air ushers fallen leaves along the gutter. The river water makes gentle noises against the timeless stone of the bridge. No one’s awake. It’s a thin time of year, October. Thin and dry, full of space, ready to catch. Every sensation is a spark of kindling against the past and gone. I’m burning with memory on this walk. You knew me when I saw with different eyes and taught me to notice. You used to walk with me at these odd hours, back in our time, remember? Sometimes it made me uneasy, the way you’d take my upper arm to get my attention or turn me towards something. I felt frail, how easily you could move me, or squeeze till I felt my blood pump. Can you even stand it? How the most annoying quirks of the people you love are what you end up missing the most—the special glitches that make them who they are, buzzing across your memory and sticking there. Maybe you wouldn’t like how I’ve changed. Maybe you’d find me crass where I once was innocent. Maybe I’ll always care about you liking me, at least the version of you I keep in mind. The one I’m talking to now, that I could never disappoint. The one walking with me now in the half-light, intangible. The one I turn to now, to point at the bee I’m seeing, dead and twisted up in some fake spider web decor clinging to the bricks of this apartment building.

    Poor bee, what a stupid death. I can almost hear the plucky fire of your voice. My eye is twitching as I’m sure the bee twitched, caught and confused in the cottony dark. A lonely, scary death, I’d say. I guess the web matters not for this bee. Synthetic or otherwise, her fate would be much the same. Still, she deserves a better ending. I want a better ending. You were always good company. Maybe you would be proud of me after all. I have no gloss, no mask. I’ve slowed and opened. I hold things better. I’m freeing the dead bee and tucking her into some greenery. Very little scares me now, because everything does, I’d say. I think you’d laugh at that, and we’d keep walking. •

  • Re, Hello Earth: Poetry

    Re, Hello Earth: Poetry

    Crossing over the desert brow

    spare ranges, sparse rivers

    I see the red lights south & how softly they wave their fingers

    Who are all these places we call home?

    Do all our roots have voices we can simply call or cut off?

    The pecan tree coughs fruit

    onto to the ground,

    mockingbirds sing for the bounty

    in my mind they dance iridescent, but they are black

    in my mind the oranges always orange, but they are green

    the roses — gone

    the tree & viny terrace — gone

    the dog — gone, resting infinite in the roses

    the long, long table at Guadalajara ever shorter

    illness chopping at the end like a mill, daily

    Why did I go? Why did I go?

    In my mind I never left and that’s the problem

    But I’m not here But I’m not here

    for these rocky waters (in my mind) an endless ocean

    for these rocky waters (in my mind) in the eye of a storm

    (in my mind) is there anything I can offer

    other than to tend the irrigation

    to patch the roof

    to pick the oranges

    to offer my words

    When I am home, I offer my silly, silly words (ocean endless)

    I offer my meager hours to share your table (ocean endless)

    to receive your stories (ocean endless)

    to get your advice on care for my chiles though the mulberries

    blanketed them with flies and rot months ago

    Tell me —

    tell me that one again

    you were how old when you rode your first plane?

    looking out over the fields of tomato

    your head in the hum, their red in the dirt

    did they look like fireworks? •

    John-Francis Quiñonez (they/them) is a Desert Blossom // Resident of The Dirt Palace in Providence, RI // maker of Ice Creams with Big Feeling // Be-coveralled Aunt Figure & Events Guardian at Lost Bag // proud member & organizer at Binch Press & Queer.Archive.Work. // & is thinking (constantly) about emerging “RE: HELLO EARTH” appears in Keep Your Little Lights Alive (poems after Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds of Love’ and others), available at Heartleaf & Riffraff Bookstore & Bar. Also at Riffraff , you can view a collection of their paintings entitled “i won’t wait to love you”, on display from September to November. Gallery opening is Sept. 29th. SUNDAE MONDAYS (A Big Feeling Ice Cream series) are held at Bolt Coffee Co. (Washington St.) every Monday until they open their first brick & mortar!

  • Poetry Review: Residence Time by Sarah Kersey

    Poetry Review: Residence Time by Sarah Kersey

    “I never believed something, / or somebody, could hold me,” writes Sarah Kersey in the title poem of their debut collection, Residence Time (Newfound, Oct 2024). They hope the biblical Moses will offer them wisdom on his adoptive mother, even as the sea rises. Instead, Kersey teaches themselves to swim: “I finally learned to float.”

    Residence Time is a glorious act of self-revelation. Kersey’s poetry sings a powerful lesson in liberating yourself from history without letting go of ancestry or yourself. Kersey holds solid footing in the poetry community as a finalist for the 2021 PEN American Emerging Voices Fellowship, and they are an alum of the Tin House Workshop. A local poet and x-ray technologist, they write in Chelsea, MA. It’s no coincidence that the language in Residence Time cuts with laser-sharp precision. Each poem lights up like an x-ray, visible to the bone. Lines bloom out of the body, invoking blood and breath. “Our hearts are the oldest things about us,” Kersey writes in “Transducer.” Their poetry sticks to you and rattles in your brain for days: “No one is welllit inside. / Can’t cough the dark out of a throat.” Residence Time begins with a heartbeat. “Before there was a word for me, or you, / there were hearts only 70 years from Africa. / They fluttered at the sound.” Kersey repeats this opening line in multiple poems, chewing on the brutal history of enslavement. Their repetition creates a living pulse as if to challenge this violence with survival: “We were not meant to survive / the departure.” Kersey demands a reckoning on behalf of the countless voices lost once colonizers divided the world through “me or you.” Their poetry calls you back to this separation, again and again, like a parting of the sea, a break in a bone, or a rupture in humankind.

    Kersey remains skeptical of language and its misuse. Residence Time presses on a long history of injustice, accusing humans and gods alike. In “Signature,” the “ancestors, under a gibbous moon, / bowed their heads to the ground, / read the Bible their masters misread.” A complicit God floods them with “His searchlight. / It was arresting.” In a single word, Kersey unloads a coiled spring. This God is not only “arresting,” as in astonishing. This God is “arresting,” as in a policing force. How do you trust a world under such a God, under such violence? Kersey testifies through poetry, writing about religious and historical betrayal with generosity. They ascend on the same imagery, reclaiming spiritual language for themselves. But Kersey acknowledges that words feel inadequate when bearing witness. “When I speak, my words are not big, / but infinitesimal testimony.” Their poems investigate a world that stretches and shrinks proportion, depending on who holds the pen.

    So Kersey returns to the body, again and again. They revive Moses – and this time – channel him to swell as large as the ocean: “I part my lips like the Red Sea.” Kersey opens their mouth, and a new faith in their own voice pours out. A book becomes part of the body, a “stitched fist / which tears threads / to point a / finger.” When the collective fight for liberation feels too large, Kersey reminds us that we can free ourselves as individuals over and over. Kersey accuses the fathers who failed them, both by blood and religion. “I stop thinking of God as a father. / I’ve never seen God / and I haven’t seen my father.” Self-liberation transforms into a sacred act. When a father fails, the child recovers gracefully. Kersey’s speaker accuses the father, “How many women / have you loved in your life, Bobby? / Two? Three? Five? / I have only loved one: my mother. / I miss her today. / Our love transcended blood.” Toward the end of Residence Time, Kersey clutches Moses’s rod and stops asking for advice. “Everybody will focus on the miracle / of the Red Sea, / but no one will know how / I also freed my mother.” By the closing poem in the collection, the speaker goes a step further, ruling themselves: “I conquered / my body and led it / as a slave.”

    Who cares about miracles when we have poets like Kersey? They are the miracle workers we need right now, parting a clear path ahead. •

    Residence Time is available on Newfound.org for pre-order. Available on October 7, 2024, in e-book and print.

  • Double Sonnet For S04E13: Poetry

    Double Sonnet For S04E13: Poetry

    You shipped them: Mulder and Scully. Some spooky guy

    hot for aliens, hair flopping tantrums at a bald

    FBI father figure. Too punk rock

    for paperwork, he rendezvoused in soft

    lit parking garages with strangers. She filed

    the official reports on slick gray creatures,

    straight-faced in her blazer. Snapped latex glove

    above autopsy table. Scalpelled herself out

    of hostage situations. If she got shot,

    so what? Shoulder-padded, she played sharp shooter

    to his damsel.

    You shipped his special

    agency to summon her: how she would come

    to his rescue, skeptical of space invaders.

    The heavens opened to such close encounters.

    We all yearn for an unidentified

    object. Do you investigate forever?

    She probed volcanic caves, and parasitic

    worms in Alaskan stations, then, rolled with news

    of a hypermobile mutant hiding in her

    apartment ducts. Like: what? It’s Tuesday. No

    sweat for an agent. Taupe lipstick: perfect.

    Red bob: unfazed. But why wait four seasons

    for the big question on a relationship?

    Hey, Mulder. Why don’t I

    have my own desk in the basement?

    You want to believe the truth

    is out there, flying transcendent. Here’s the real

    conspiracy: she never once sat down

    in four years, and you called that a partnership.

  • Summer in RI: Poetry

    Summer in RI: Poetry

    Summertime on the stoop
    at Grandma’s,
    with my cousins,
    laughing while
    the ice cream truck
    music blared.
    Get three cones and a chocolate
    éclair.
    Sometimes,
    we spent the whole day
    sitting on those stairs.
    Grandma in the living room,
    watching Telemundo.
    Bachata music
    playing out
    from the second floor.
    Pooling all our money together
    for some munchies.
    Someone,
    take a walk with me
    to the corner store.
    Piling in the car,
    now we’re heading
    to the beach.
    Ice in the cooler,
    sitting on the back seat.
    Got the
    Tony’s Market sandwiches,
    ham, lettuce and cheese,
    Tony…
    get the cat off the meats.
    Fridays nights,
    feeling the cool breeze
    on a full moon,
    sometimes your cousins
    become your best friends.
    Blockbusters

    and Domino’s pizza,
    served with laughter.
    Man, I hope the summer
    never comes to an end.
    Working in my dad’s store,
    stocking the freezers
    with Coca Cola.
    He told me
    every man has to pay his dues.
    New mall opens soon.
    It’s named Providence Place.
    Can’t wait
    to go to school,
    and show off my new shoes.
    Rocky Point Park,
    standing on line
    for the Freefall.
    On the way down,
    The wind was heaven’s kiss.
    Bitter sweet when we leave,
    still reveling in the bliss,
    knowing I’ll spend the year
    waiting for another moment
    like this.
    Gonzalez bus trips at six,
    give my grandma a kiss.
    And now its
    back to the Bronx I go.
    Rhode Island
    don’t forget me
    I will be back soon.
    And on the day
    that I return
    I will call you HOME.

    Painting by Umberto Crenca, acrylic on canvas, 2023

  • Spoken Word Warriors: The Legacy of Spoken Word Poetry from the Griots to Mr. Orange Live

    Spoken Word Warriors: The Legacy of Spoken Word Poetry from the Griots to Mr. Orange Live

    “Spokenword” poetry, an art form steeped in tradition and innovation, has woven its way through the annals of history, echoing the voices of griots, resonating in the streets of Harlem, and pulsating through the beats of rebellious hearts. From its origins in African oral tradition to its modern manifestations in the poetry scene of Providence, Rhode Island, spokenword has been a vehicle for cultural expression, social change, and personal liberation. In this exploration, we journey through the evolution of spokenword, tracing its path from the griots of Africa to the dynamic contributions of poets like Damont Combs, also known as Mr. Orange Live, whose vibrant presence illuminates stages and hearts alike.

    THE GRIOTS CUSTODIANS OF ORAL TRADITION: The story of spokenword poetry begins with the griots of West Africa. Revered storytellers and oral historians passed down their ancestral history, culture, and wisdom through poetic verse and rhythmic cadence. For centuries, griots served as the guardians of oral tradition, weaving tales of triumph and tragedy, love, and loss, into a tapestry of words that connected generations and preserved the essence of their culture.

    THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE A CULTURAL RESURGENCE: Fast forward to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, a period of cultural and intellectual flourishing for African Americans. In the bustling streets of Harlem, poets like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Claude McKay breathed new life into the art of spoken word, infusing their poetry with the rhythms of jazz, blues, and the vibrant energy of the city. Their words became a rallying cry for social justice, racial pride, and cultural identity, inspiring a generation of poets to find their voice and speak their truth.

    THE BEAT GENERATION VOICES OF DISSENT: During the postwar era in the 1950s and 1960s, a new wave of poets emerged on the American literary scene. The Beat Generation, led by luminaries such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, rejected the materialism and conformity of mainstream society in favor of a more spontaneous, authentic form of expression. Through their raw, unfiltered verse and unconventional performance styles, Beat poets challenged the status quo, embraced personal freedom, and laid the groundwork for the countercultural revolution that would follow.

    THE BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT POETRY AS PROTEST: Amid civil rights struggles during the 1960s and 1970s, the Black Arts Movement emerged as a powerful force representing social and political change. Poets like Askia Toure, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and Nikki Giovanni used spoken word poetry as a tool for liberation, empowerment, and resistance. Their words became weapons against racism, oppression, and injustice, igniting a cultural revolution that reverberated across the nation and inspired generations of poets to use their voices for change.

    THE POETRY SCENE IN PROVIDENCE A HUB OF CREATIVITY: In the heart of New England, the city of Providence, Rhode Island, has become a thriving center of spokenword poetry and artistic expression. Here, poets like Damont Combs, known as Mr. Orange Live, have made their mark on the local poetry scene and beyond. A graduate with a degree in Computer Technology Service from Johnson and Wales University, Mr. Combs has released two acclaimed books of poetry: “My Poem… My Riddle” (Prysmatic Dreams Publishing, 2015) and “Damont Combs Presents a Touch of Orange” (Kingdom Enterprise LLC, 2016). His electrifying performances and dynamic hosting have earned him accolades, such as Poet of the Year (2018 Indie Author Legacy Award) and RI Mentor of the Year (2019), as well as recognition for his award-winning films in 2020.

    MR. ORANGE LIVE A BEACON OF CREATIVITY AND INSPIRATION: Mr. Orange Live’s contributions to the Providence poetry scene are as vibrant as his namesake hue. Through his poetry, hosting, and advocacy work he has inspired and empowered countless artists and audiences. His commitment to the arts, social justice, and community empowerment exemplifies the spirit of spokenword warriors everywhere, reminding us of the transformative power of spokenword poetry to provoke thought, spark conversation, and effect change.

    CONTINUING THE LEGACY A CALL TO ACTION: As we reflect on the legacy of spokenword poetry, let us honor the warriors who have paved the way for generations of poets to come. Let’s celebrate the diversity, resilience, and creativity of spoken word artists worldwide. And let us carry forth the torch of spokenword poetry, using our voices to speak truth to power, amplify marginalized voices, and build a more just and equitable world for all. For in the words of Mr. Orange Live and the spokenword warriors who came before him, we find the inspiration and courage to continue the journey of self-expression and social change through the power of spokenword poetry. • Michael Warrior Bonds is an internationally respected poet, author, and dedicated community outreach coordinator from Boston, Massachusetts.

  • Bell St Poem (September 21)

    Bell St Poem (September 21)

    walking from bell st. the sky is a warm and close
    dusky blue
    as usual, I think about
    my head.
    the blocks are cooling and dark
    I have less to say to you.
    there are books of poetry on the ground
    “the unmappable now”
    so deep blue.
    if I am gentle
    and by knowing my gentleness
    you know yours
    then take my face in your hand and turn it,
    and press it back into the earth of
    the rest of my life,
    and before.
    if you are gentle too
    then help me go.

    – lu

    lu lives in providence ri where they write songs and poems with a curiosity and attention to place, and will soon be recording a second album of songs. you can find their music at bittergrasses.bandcamp.com

  • A Gay Pride Dialogue

    A Gay Pride Dialogue

    Anthony DiPietro (left) and John Kotula (right).

    We’re John Kotula and Anthony DiPietro. A mutual friend put us together. We’re both writers who celebrate Pride. For several weeks we have been in dialogue by text, email, phone, and once over coffee.


    John Kotula: Anthony has a new book of poetry, kiss & release, which looks at relationships and sex, drawing on his gay identity and experience.


    Anthony DiPietro: Two years ago, John presented an art exhibition that included an illustrated chapbook called Coming Out. John’s project was inspired after the November 2022 massacre in Colorado that targeted queer people. John is a man who has been romantically in love with men and had sex with men, although he has been in a monogamous marriage to a woman for the past 30 years. While his circle of friends and family knew this about him, John consciously undertook a more public act of “coming out” through acts of creation: artwork and writing.


    JK: Our mutual friend thought, correctly, that I might be interested in writing about DiPietro’s book. Hell, I just want to write about that title! Picture a trout on a hook dangling from a line over a brook. The fisherman has him where he wants him, but the intent is to free him from the hook, toss him back into the water to swim away, perhaps to be caught another day.

    The hook hasn’t done too much damage; the trout will heal, maybe his mouth will remain a little twisted, but given his trout brain, this encounter won’t stick with him for long. The fisherman, on the other hand, will return often to the image of that particular trout, swishing his tail as he moves off into the shadows of the stream.


    Now do the switch: instead of a fish with rainbow sides, picture a boy with dreamy eyes. The kiss grabs hold of him, but the kisser isn’t interested in ownership or possession. When the lips meet, when the tongues find each other, that in and of itself is enough. (Okay… maybe “kiss” here is shorthand for sex.) After the “release,” the kisser writes poems about the experience. And the boy? Well, he has a short attention span.


    AD: I have been an out gay man since my 20s, though coming out is a process that evolves over time. Learning about your project helped me understand my own book as an act of pride, an act of coming out as a gay sex poet through a vulnerable, exposing collection of poems.


    JK: Why did you choose to label yourself “gay sex poet” in your bio?


    AD: I decided to claim it because I expect that some people might use the subject matter to dismiss the book. Who can level that as a criticism now that I’ve named and acknowledged it? Who can ask me to be quiet about sex when it’s right there in this statement of who I am?


    JK: This is making me think of lyrics from Nina Simone’s famous protest song “Mississippi Goddam”:


    Yes, you lied to me all these years
    You told me to wash and clean my ears
    And talk real fine just like a lady
    And you’d stop calling me Sister Sadie


    AD: Nina Simone also said, “What I hope to do all the time is to be so completely myself… to be so much myself that my audiences and even people who meet me are confronted, they’re confronted with what I am, inside and out, as honest as I can be, and this way they have to see things about themselves, immediately.”


    JK: And James Baldwin wrote: “You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.”


    When we hold these conversations, I picture us sitting in the middle of a circle of all the people we reference. A cast of characters, some more imaginary than others, including Viola Davis, Orville Peck, Barkley Hendricks, Elsa of Arendelle, and The Lady Chablis. There are also supporting appearances by Clint Eastwood, Willie Nelson, and The Polish Rider.


    AD: And you brought up Frank O’Hara, the celebrated, openly gay poet and art curator. These essential things about him are on display in the poem “Having a Coke with You.” It celebrates gay love and sensuality while incorporating acts of creativity and several art forms.


    My gay younger brother asked me to read that poem at his wedding. I decided to memorize it, practiced for months, got inside the lines, and the emotional turns of the poem. That last line,


    it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
    which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

    was a mystery to me, and I felt I had to land it perfectly. When the day came, I performed “Having a Coke with You” from the heart, without notecards.

    JK: Have you seen the portraits by Larry Rivers? Rivers thought of himself as straight, was married a few times, and had a bunch of kids, but was lovers with O’Hara, of whom he painted a number of famous portraits, including nude ones. Take a look. Did anyone ever look at a man’s body with so much heat?


    AD: Exactly! I see it. I’m exhilarated by our conversation, which I’d sum up this way: Coming out is just one act of Pride. Pride can be an artistic act or series of actions that are completely individual. However someone practices it, Pride is for everyone. It is about being your full and authentic self.


    And Pride is a movement. A movement is a beautiful thing. We are being witch-hunted right now. Our rights are being attacked and successfully taken away. But those who try to do that are not a movement, they are backlash. Backlash comes from a place of fear, which makes it ugly. Our movement comes from love — and that is beautiful.

  • Alienation of Affection

    Alienation of Affection

    Thumb traces thumb, lines flat and forgotten 

    until the lazy sun stretches to her highest 

    and the past burns white hot — smooth as satin. 

    Indifferent, a toaster hums through the quiet. 

    Torrid New England summer, tepid wind heaven sent. 

    Sidewalks cracked, the sweaty outline of our thighs 

    pressed deep in the unforgiving pavement. 

    Brow furrowed, hands steady as he applies 

    pressure to the cool steel swiped from the kitchen. 

    Tequila stolen too; we drink wordlessly to our crimes. 

    Silence suffocates as names blossom on skin, 

    eyes catch for the last time. 

    Machine chirps break the still — past slips, deferred. 

    Blade smooth against wheat, flesh unremembered.

    - Alexis Wilson
  • Washington

    Washington

    i. Shear
    Eighteen spans, massive 
    Trembling softly
    Soothing and rocking, murmuring
    Forgetfulness, abnegating the air
    The space beneath 
    The commuters hung aloft
       Steel and concrete, manmade
    Piles driven deep, riverbed anchors
    Towering to brace
    His vertebrae
    Cooling drops condensing 
    Salt air drifting in 
    From estuary, cove and inlet
    Soothe his pebbled skin
    His task is far from easy
    A minor Atlas bearing 
    Stress and strain—incalculable!
       No complaints from him
    Unless one considers those
    Transitory groans and
    Pops of weary joints
    Easily drowned in the
    Steady roar of inertia 
       A gate from East to West he  keeps
       From stately past to present
       Bearing us up, holding us aloft!
       Trembling softly
    Uncomplaining
    Shear, not sheer
    (Like a woman’s negligee
    Har har har)
       Because if the bridge was sheer
    (And not sheared)
       We wouldn’t have been caught with 
    Our pants around our ankles!
    But no one jokes like this 
    At RIDOT this late winter
    Not aloud, not after dispatches from
    Young engineers, burrowing
    Into pigeon-fouled catacombs
    With cameras and flashlights
    Drawings held tight like 
    Ancient scrolls, trembling as they    witness
       Tie-down rods in twain
    Sheared!
    Shit, they murmur 
    This is way worse than we thought
    Revelations drowned in 
    The steady roar of inertia

    ii. The Buck
    Arising, a manmade storm
       A shitstorm, a scandal brewing
       The whitehaired men, weathering
       Neckties flapping, hard hats held 
    Fast against the winds
       Texting, always texting, as if thumbing 
    The rosary invoking 
    Sublime catechisms 
    Of sobriety and thanks—
    It is hard for me to express
    to you in words the depth
    of appreciation I have
    for the support and leadership
    you provide to me and my team
    The whitehairs link their arms, knees 
    Bent, tired backs tensed, forming
       A power structure, engineered
    And constructed against
       the landing of the buck
    The men tremble in knowledge of
    Its terrible weight
    Smiling at fundraisers, shaking
       Hands massaging their temples in
       Emergency meetings they tremble
    The buck's terrible weight!
    The shitstorm, foul clods and their 
    Indelible stains, hurled heedless
    ProJo and BoGlo, Turn to 10
    Human trusses deflect
       Shift, even sag beneath
    The buck pressing heavy
    Ponderous and gross, sniffing 
    At their napes and ears
       But they do not break!
    The buck heaves slowly
    Its terrible weight!
    And rolls on
    And on, anon!
       To other bridges in other states 
    Other painful failures of our 
    Crumbling infrastructure
    As if precipitating out
    From some foreordained progression
    An emissary arrives
    To advance the scenario further
    Lo! America’s Mayor
    (For the title’s former bearer 
    Has become woefully unfit—
    An addled buffoon colluding
    With dye run down his cheeks)
       Like some imperial bishop
    In vestments of fluorescent 
    Orange and silver stripe 
    He dispenses the benediction
    Tacit indemnification
    Precious royal pardon—
    If that repair project were not 
    undertaken, the inspections that caught 
    this potentially deadly flaw 
    would not have happened
    There’s a very real risk that residents 
    would have found out through 
    a collapse
    iii. Washington
    This vital behemoth, 
    Of broad back and infinite patience
    Has borne a billion 
    Dour commutes, countless ventures and 
    Homecomings, spring vacations
    Fall returns, beach days and 
    getaways
    In his history also—
    Carnage, twisted metal, blood and
    Broken glass, fires that
    Scorched his skin, men and women alike
    Careless, drunk and swerving, mocking 
    His very purpose
    Washington, he was called
    The westbound Washington Bridge
        Abides, trembling
    Once burden-bearer, now burden 
    Used up, deficient, defunct, condemned
    Awaiting the foreman's machines
    To tear his concrete flesh

    iv. Reclamation
    What's going on here she said
    As astride their bikes they stood
       Behind them Van Leesten, sun-bathed 
    Gawping and uncertain, wondering
    Wherefore this chaos approaching
    A parade or some such gewgaw
    Her companion rejoined, squinting 
    Studying the vanguard for meaning 
    Recalling dimly the Festa, where
    Young Corleone made his bones

    All at once, the facsimile loomed 
    Towering, a white Suburban built
    Larger than life, festooned 
    With little trees and rosaries
    Wiseass bumper stickers, borne 
    Up on twenty-twos, borne up 
    On the shoulders of commuters
    City, state and federal 
    Administrators, politicians clutching 
    Ribbon-cutting scissors, 
    Engineers with laptops, 
    Dealership financiers, auto
    And home insurers, union 
    Men and women, every single one in total
    Solidarity with the mission

    The car gods bay for blood
    Her companion murmured, man 
    Shall pay obeisance
    And lesser gods shall perish
       Her reply, aborted as 
    A bollard flew overhead
       Hurled with vehement rage
    Years of unearthly spite
    And in the procession smiling
    The folk reverently approaching
    The ark, to stuff dollars in the 
    door-gaps
    Hoisting children aloft, for 
    Little hands to learn the motions
    Anointing the while the icon
    Beer transubstantiating 
    To turtle wax, to full synthetic 
    To regular unleaded
    A few were jostled harshly
    Or in a careless stumble, caught
    Before the bogus coach
       Grille-struck and mowed under
    Pedestrians in the last
    As inertia roared about them
       Bollard after bollard flew and
    In the taillight glow
       Figures danced and whirled,
    With cone-shaped hats and brushes
    Agents of revanche, 
    Awake in joyful trembling 
    Ecstatically restriping 
    Inch by careful inch 
    The stolen holy pavement

       What fresh car hell is this?
    She entreated, and
    Hearing no word in answer the two
    Mounted and rode in fear 
    Trembling
    As previously was their custom 
    Before the fleeting respite of
    The South Water Street urban trail, 
    Fleeing, before the marchers 
    Singing
    In gleeful, boisterous shouts

    HERE IN MY CAR
    I FEEL SAFEST OF ALL
    I CAN LOCK ALL MY DOORS
    IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO LIVE—


    Final lines of poem are lyrics from Gary Numan’s song “Cars”