Seven poems by Trina Scordo
DeWITT AVE
a stem reaches out
from a clogged gutter
like the cold thin finger of an anxious child
Jakeema was shot
on a bare sidewalk
his 10 speed bicycle wilted
against the community center fence
a disposed pack of Newports
flutters under a chalky oak
the bronchitis cough of a 5 year old girl
stammers in damp July air
the night pops
like a beer can
the hiss of wet aluminum
rain on tar
a child's saliva stained pillowcase
the stale sticky mouth of fear
waits for the drive-by
the drop off the pick up
a 17 year old boy
bent and fatigued
sits on a loose-limbed porch
he is the under-aged
minimum waged
renter
debtor
the bottomless blades of broken glass
the frail strands of alleyway weeds
burn and smolder like the salty ashes of Darfur
SACRAMENT
Nonna dusts flour
kneads homemade dough
on the formica, aluminum altar
in the center of the pink basement
the kitchen table rocks
with her movement
she shows me
how to arrange black olives
in the squared pizza dough
I follow her thick and swollen fingers
along the edges of the pan
my 6 year old fingers
fill in the white spaces
She pours olive oil
spreads September's homemade sauce
from a heated mason jar
grates mozzarella
I break the first commandment of the kitchen
and steal a taste
of each raw ingredient
Nonna removes my hand from the dough
places a piece of bread in my mouth
her hands smell of fresh parsley and basil
She gives me orders in Italian
I respond in English
Foreign and native are the same to me
After lunch, Nonna and I walk down
Main Street to Schweitzer's Clothing Store
Rose the clerk understands
improvised sign language
I am a first grade translator
I ask the bus driver for directions
does he go to the Social Security building
form a line, form A, form B, sign here
a fill in for intimate discussion
We arrive home
to the sanctity of the kitchen
all the rituals are in place
vino e pane
a tavola
mangia
PORTRAIT
the sun sets behind a patchwork of Route 46 used car dealers
a reed filled lot on the south banks of the hackensack river
used to be a drive-in theatre
firestone wheels hum on steel grates of a drawbridge
dad tells me the moon is following us
down and then up the two blocks of catherine street hill
back to our first floor hampshire house apartment
the scent of turpentine and nicotine
at 5 years old, i am aware
of intoxicating flammables
dad measures distance
with one eye closed
thumb sized against a blank canvass
a Winston cigarette dangles
from the left corner of his mouth
i place the end of a paintbrush
in a pencil sharpener, he smiles
mixes oil paint on a wood palette
at 7 years old i can name Dali, Picasso, Escher
dad wears his keys on the loop of his janitor work pants
when he comes home i clip his keyring to my levis
he lets me steer along anderson ave
the Sunday morning drive to pedoto's bakery shop
1971 hunter green oldsmobile cutlass
white racing stripes on the front and back hood
green vinyl bucket seats are rough and textured
my fingers fit in the smooth grooves of the steering wheel
DMV inspection sticker
a centered black number 10
the year 1977 split
into yellow corners
saturday in hudson terrace park
the grass is dotted with daiseys and dandelions
he buys me a red and yellow plastic helicopter
the kind with the pull-string which propels it into the sky
blue, unmoving
like one of dad's easel paintings
a rainy april dawn
i question the existence
of the easter bunny
dad turns his thumbprints into rabbit prints
along my bedroom windowsill
in nonno's backyard
dad builds a wooden swing set
my name painted in black thick letters
on a piece of plywood at the tip of the a-frame
when i was 11, mom and dad divorced
the swing set taken apart
i looked out of the basement window
white pieces of wood stacked
in a debris pile along the metal garden fence
my name plate hung from a twisted rusty nail
dad never talks about his parents
his father, a disinherited doctor who died at 98
or his calabrisella mother
he told me one story about his childhood
the american gi that gave him a hershey bar
as soldiers marched through ferrazzano
past the dusty spine of a cathedral
he left home at 17 to join the italian army
when i was 17
dad gave me his father's binoculars
he handed me the brown leather carrying case
we stared out of his hi-rise window
into the twilight of rush hour headlamps
flashing red lights
of the george washington bridge
we said nothing
he and I hugged once
when he got remarried
his hand squeezed the midsection of my back
i tugged his right shoulder
then we pulled away as if our breath had stopped
dad and i are incomplete
obscured by red and blue hues
misplaced angles, endless stairwells
fragmented
like the winding white lights
of the parkway on a hazy August night
CHILDHOOD ON A HIGHWAY
the first time I thought I'd choke
on my tongue at the dinner table
a broken plate on a linoleum floor
I saw every fight
on the road in a vinyl seat Buick
on a red living room carpet
in a dark wood bedroom
shouts about a steady job
and tubes of oil paint that sit in a closet
I never said anything
to anyone about losing control
I heard everything through plaster walls
the fight that made Dad sleep
in granpa's garage
on a Saturday night
I was at a bus stop with him
in front of Shop Rite
without change
we called mom collect
to get a taxi home
and I was afraid of an unfamiliar cab
on a strange road without guardrails
I don't want it to be me
in the back seat
of a 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass
shaking and alone
drymouthed like my mother's scared ghost
my father's insecure hand and pallet
I dream about Dad's paintings
the one with burnt mannequins
on Escher stairs
and a closed down factory
I live in that house with a guillotine in the front yard
and a baby caught in an attic spider web
a one arm Viet Nam vet for company
it has taken 30 years
for the fear to rise from my stomach
drip from my tongue
Dad lives like disappointment
a discontinued spare part
empty as an unpatched ceiling hole
the broken glass I cannot wash from my hands
July 2002
LAST DAYS OF THE PALACE
it makes me shake
how she wears defeat
in shades of seaside green
tired as a skeleton
fatigued with cancer
I visit her alone
a child
in a haunted mansion
behind gray garage doors
skin and thoughts collapse
on a battered linoleum floor
I have been inside
her pale laughter
peeled back layers of plywood
like scar tissue
only to see her raped walls
stripped stomach
bloated with beer bottles
cheap plastic streamers
and popped off bic lighters
I come here to pick copper locks
find snapshots in a keyhole
listen to 30 years of strung out
rock and roll through broken windows
I know her dark shutdown rooms
like nights when I would hide
behind a bedroom door
cover my eyes and ears
this is where childhood rusts
in the back of a faded yellow arcade
like a dismantled fairytale
a boarded carousel house
red and cracked
waits for a hurricane that never comes
August 2002
STRIPPED
in this town
metal street signs are poems
buried in Jersey sunsets
I drive on her roads
where rebuilt engines die
on empty highways
comfortable in these gloves
worn for a life of fist fights and ashes
I have seen her stripped
roof blown off cold
boardwalk limbs scarred
alone like a frozen serpent
her streets are shelters
for homeless geniuses
who walk with history in a knapsack
and music in the grooves of their skin
there are no secret skeletons
crushed between rusted basketball courts
stucco seaside bars and wild flower lots
her empty buildings are my obsession
when I'm scared she lets me know
it's okay to hide
in seaweed stained alleys
follow songs to 1975
or some other year
that wasn't meant for me
I walk miles on her penniless beaches
no special destination
a pure product of words and guitars
searching for a melody in her twisted arms
January 2002
SUNDAY IN POINT PLEASANT
my father's name falls
like swept sand
on this gray beach
the boardwalk is smaller
than he promised
and the arcade is dull
like his distant image
electric swings
and an iron rollercoaster clatter empty
the consequence of a misspent
Jersey summer
5 blue haired boys in Jenkinsons
4 grip the smooth sided sanctuary
of pinball machines
1 plays skee ball alone
on a gritty paisley carpet
I stood where he stands
waiting for the excitement
of my father's footsteps
on wooden beach stairs
it is just like Dad
to show me the July side of a beach
never the truth of ripped awnings
that flap in March rain
or dirty orange amusement lights
that fade in coastal fog
he never told me
about the unkind crest of a wave
the stinging dark sand beneath the blue
he never called me
as the steel mill burned and collapsed
I learned to navigate in a city of dark circles
on trampled shore roads
the endless clank of video games and coins
comfortable and useless as his voice
--Trina Scordo
Poetry by John Grey
MEG
You are asked, why not mother,
as if child in hand
absolves you of...
what did you say
you purposely dismantled,
wantonly wrecked?
It's the baby season
and your stomach's bare.
In their eyes,
you could kill your first
as long as you had a second.
Look, your sister's pregnant.
She's swallowed a small planet
but her shape is now sacrosanct.
She's becoming a monument
to a fertility God.
And you... you turn your back
on all potential sculptors.
It's been hinted at.
Are you barren?
Can no man
want your life story, as a chapter in his own?
Look at your sister.
She's having a child.
You're bearing up under an inquisition.
Another's life,
a life your own...
it's a race to the birth.
THE HAUNTERS
The dead don't haunt
for spite.
They're like those people
who return because
they forgot something.
But they have no way of knowing
what that something is.
And they don't whisper
in my ear to annoy me.
They've got no one else
to talk to.
For some reason,
the dead can't speak to the dead.
Without me, apparently,
the art of conversation dies.
The dead are in the closet
trying on my clothes.
They're in the stereo humming
to my favorite songs.
I like to think well maybe
it's my father
or the friend who died of leukemia
last year,
but the dead are just dementia
without bodies.
They don't know who they are
so how am I to know.
Ultimately, the dead haunt
because of job security.
It's the one thing the living
don't do as well.
The last one who tried it on me
had a name
and even knew why she was here with me.
I didn't wish her dead though.
Just replaced by one who was.
THE WOLF MAN WILL BE WITH YOU IN A MOMENT
I could change into
a werewolf. If I can feel
the hurt of someone dying
on me or falling out
of love with me then
I can imagine great dark
shoots of hair bursting
out of my palms, my throat,
my cheeks. If I can hear
someone say, I have only
another six months or
it's just not working,
then I can be the beast
under orders from that
fat yellow satellite,
roaming and killing.
If I could be hours,
days even, lying flat
on the bed, looking up
at the ceiling like
its peeling paint,
its webs, its spiders,
are a legitimate view
of the world, then
I can be down on all
fours and baying my
heart out. If there's nothing
that can't be taken away
from me, then there's
nothing I can't be.
If I can live with
people asking me how
I'm doing, then I can
be a good answer.
JIGSAW MAN
It was a jigsaw puzzle,
instant therapy.
I began at the edges,
even in those early stages,
believing here was a portrait,
a landscape, within reach
of my busy hands, good eye.
While everything fell apart,
I was putting this together.
I may have used more
pieces than was necessary,
tears from the bedroom,
fragments of guilt,
of retribution.
And sometimes, the silence
was so thick I could
break off whole slabs of that,
add it to the mix.
But the picture grew
despite this dissonance
in its ranks,
became something more even
than was on the outside
of the box.
It was a jigsaw puzzle,
five years of it.
No matter where I was,
I was working on it,
twenty four hours a day.
I'm not sure if it
was truly done
or if it was just a case
of nothing more that
I could do,
but one day I just left it
where it was
and thought no more about it.
With so much time
on my hands now,
I began to love you more.
Thus another puzzle began,
almost without my knowledge.
DESERT CAPER
An entire canon of tricks and phoniness
is denied you.
Instead, he's showing the film of himself
as warm, romantic, flickering
silent images of Rudolph Valentine
He talks like champagne bubbles popping.
beneath a fluttering tent,
brings you to bed, his particular desert.
If only it were a field of grass,
he says, guiding his long caravan of sighs.
Still, you've never known a solitude so broad.
He touches you like blown sand does a face.
You ride a camel of insight,
years without water.
Finally, at the oasis,
you look up and he's barely there.
Flakes of his skin rub off,
flitter through the canopy of palms, dates.
He kisses you long and firm
like a hot, bleached skeleton might.
How smug, your loneliness,
the only source of moisture here.
HOSPITAL NIGHTS
There's a spectre of a man at the window,
on my side surprisingly, not hungry
to come in but struggling to get out,
trying to open it with his eyes,
like they're a beak and this room
is a bottle. He's out of Blake maybe.
Or the ghost of the stranger they fished
from the river when I was six. Funny
how, in life, death is the only thing
that sticks with you.
He's not the moment green flesh
emerged from the water and that shriveled
hand flopped down on the bank like a dead wave.
He's the real waves that followed.
The conclusion they never came to.
The suggestion that where there's
room for nothing, there's always room
for one more.
I almost hear a talk between doctors
in the corridor, heads bent into each other,
winding up each other's theories.
Could be a tumor churning his brain
into compost.
Has to be cancer ripping out the heart.
All of these night sweats and maybe
my phantom is a use this salty liquid
finds for itself, make a new man
while another recedes, moves away
from his outer flesh, soaring somewhere
inside himself on the magic carpet
of a new drug, promised by a genie
in a white coat that we'd land in the place
where the pain stops.
The doctors are arguing now, a couple
of conflicting diagnoses grabbing at
each other's throats.
Each wants his devil to be what
comes for me.
My ghost companion says,
well at least they're
not numbing you with needles,
as if a hole or two in my flesh
would be inspiration
for these holes to breed.
He knows there^s no way to force
the lock, so he settles on the glass,
breaks into watery pieces, each big
enough, content enough, to swallow a star.
There's always the desire, he says,
arrange what's left of you around that.
I'm not an angel, if that's what you're
thinking, he adds as he wobbles eerily
on his cross of light.
THE BIRD IN THE MIRROR
I gave my bird a mirror.
It thought it saw another canary,
stared, turned away, stared again
but, eventually, being wary
gave way to all-out aggression
at this intruder's unmitigated gall
at slipping into another's cage,
bright yellow feathers and all.
Eventually, though, the bird saw
the folly in glass-beak scrimmage,
began to develop a fondness
for this swaggering bird image.
Now he and I are on a wavelength
when it comes to reflection,
fear, anger, consternation
are now compromise, even affection.
Yes, much time is spent thinking
reflection is really good for me.
So he sings to the mirror like a man.
I chirp at mine like a canary.
GREEN LAKE, WHERE SHE DROWNED
A face spills from my handful of water.
A face ripples, unseeing,
across the soft current of my eyes.
If I were here for the drowning,
I would leap into the lake in my heavy clothes,
swim out to her flailing body,
haul her to shore on my shoulder,
kiss the life back into her and expect nothing for it.
If she did thank me, I would swim twenty
giddy, splashing laps like a crazed fish,
hand-stand my way around its circumference.
Instead, months later,
I bend down like a deer, a bear,
like something drinking at this pool.
That's why I lift her memory in my hands.
That's why the tiny drops spill through my fingers.
That's why I struggle with
the one place at the surface
that can conceal such depths.
THE SCAR ON YOUR RIGHT CHEEK
It recalls an incident
but is spoken in another language now.
It knows it can't be eloquent
so it strives to be profound.
Survivor, it says
when it speaks at all.
Mostly, it reminds you of rail tracks,
hooked rugs, an addled uncle's
toothless smile.
Thankfully, they are all analogies
that need go no further
than the skin.
If the left cheek sat with the right
in a coffee house
sipping Java,
they would talk around it,
how the kisses felt
as they gingerly maneuvered
its rough borders,
how the mirror looked to the eyes
to be the pureness of the skin.
If thunder rumbled somewhere
in the background,
the flesh could say
that was it,
but the sky is always clear
and translucency tells
such great heart-warming lies.
OUR FIRST APARTMENT
There's nothing like a buckled floor
to hone those walking skills.
I have to be mindful
of where I tread
in these cramped rooms.
Oh yes and a shaking table
is the perfect device
for evening out the tremors
of a wobbly chair.
And imagination finds much fodder
in a bathroom
where rust can buff the skin
to gleaming
and a hose can be a shower.
And a view of a factory,
a brown river and an improvised dump,
brings out the egalitarian
in eyes spoiled by the superficiality
of farms and hills and greens
and smokeless sky.
And so does the pigeon shit
on the window-sill
and the skinny glow
of a flashlight
when the bulbs fail.
A lumpy mattress
is like a lecture
on the finer points
of sleep appreciation.
A rock-hard pillow makes
more points on the subject
here and there.
And always,
someone in the sheets beside me
reminds me
that I didn't have her
warm and close and cozy
when I was living fancy,
comfortable at home.
She kisses me then
and it feels like
when I tap the t.v. just right
and we get the picture back.
THERE'S A GATEWAY TO YOU
Late afternoon,
the sun dim
as a theater's dying applause,
I stand outside your house,
my feet still on the sidewalk,
but my hand upon the gate.
Every place is warm in me
but for the flesh
that touches metal.
Everything is known
but for the consequence
of that gate opening.
I see uncertainty
in a Cape Cod house
framed by garden.
I see uncertainty
in a path
from the world of many
to the front door of one.
I hear uncertainty creak
as I undo the latch,
and nervousness
squeaks by its hinges.
Soon, you will be another gate,
capable of such
expectancy and fear.
I will stand before your entry-way
just like this,
a whole body on the outside
but trembling fingers
feeling for the way in.
It will seem a safe and wide
and unfettered world
outside this gate of yours.
But it will be a world
in which no one loves,
no one really enters.
CELL PHONE RINGS ON A COMMUTER TRAIN
I'm sure the guy arranges
the call beforehand.
He wants us to know
that he's not alone in this world,
that there's somebody out there
who cares enough to speak to him
at five thirty in the afternoon,
halfway between the towns
of Sharon and Attleboro.
Once a trip,
more regular than the train itself,
heads jerk out of books,
conversation stops,
and everybody in the car
looks briefly at him.
But by the time he answers his cell phone,
he's old news and,
people go back to what they were doing.
For a moment, he feels the
acknowledgement, the admiration
of his fellow man.
But when he ends the conversation with,
"I love you too,"
it's only his wife who knows.
THAT HOUND OF MINE
He's up early,
sniffing and scratching against the door.
He doesn't just want to go out,
he has to go out.
Soon, he's off and following the scent.
His busy nose makes me aware
that there's something in the grass.
There's more of it in the tree trunk
he rubs against.
It's even in a rock.
And here's me, his master,
who always imagined there was
never less of anything
than what's in a rock.
And then at night, curled up at my feet,
he even sniffs my legs, my hands,
as if whatever it is that's out there
moves around, is now in here.
He won't doze off until he's inhaled
a day's worth of odors.
Then he closes his eyes
and smells follow him into his sleep.
KNOWING MY NEIGHBOR
I'm looking across
at my neighbor's window
and wondering what he's doing.
He's moving about
but to what end?
Sometimes, I see
flesh and blood in the light,
sometimes just a shadow.
I spy a bit of cloth,
maybe a half-eaten sandwich
and is that a banjo?
Really, my neighbor is
in pieces and I'm trying
to put him back together.
And then, for some reason,
he draws the shades.
I vow to finish him
some other time.
SHE SHOWS US THE HOUSE
She was showing us the rooms
but I was occupied the entire time
with looking out the window.
I could see the curve of the bay,
the marina, the lighthouse.
I left you with her stream
of hard sell while I imagined
myself looking out when she
wasn't around, when there was just
a silence from in here, and
maybe your arm around my waist,
or hands fiddling with my backbone.
She started rattling on about
the previous occupants, and how
long the house has been in her family.
You told me later that she rambled
together tales of her first husband
with the house's prime location on
the water. And she went on about what
it was like to be a little girl here,
and which pieces of furniture dated
from that time. I didn't hear a word
of it. She wasn't showing me a thing.
I was listening to myself. I was
reacquainting my present with the past.
Such a view as this, I thought,
and it could be like that first time,
for wasn't there a bay, blue and
sun-ruffled like this, and wasn't
there a marina, busy with boats,
and a lighthouse just out there
beyond the reach of everything,
a separateness that somehow we broached
with kisses like minnows fluttering
in the glow of its light
and eyes made of looks that could
never be undone and bodies and limbs
that became other than bodies and limbs,
that were all the things floating or
rippling or flashing, that were their
own view, and beholden to the sparkle
of the one inside it. You listened to her
while I looked out like I was looking in.
She said to you, "It will be good" and I
whispered "It will be good again."
POEM TO EVERYONE WHO'S NOT US
Sure you can stay with us,
in our fifty-five year old colonial house.
fronted by apple blossoms,
backed by hardy oak and pine
where wrens and squirrels nest.
We're easy to live with.
We won't complain
if you cough all night.
You'll just wake us early
so we can see the sunrise.
And you can hog the couch,
watch the TV shows we hate.
Thankfully, that will
force us to be otherwise occupied.
You can be unhappy, angry,
save us the trouble.
You can scream
so we'll be silent.
You can distance yourself
from people,
force us even closer together.
You can say that,
based on all the evidence,
love is not for you.
We will gratefully accept
your share.
--John Grey
to top: prize poems by Mary K Herbert and
Trina Scordo
Three Bios
John Grey is an Australian-born poet (now a U.S. resident) whose
work has appeared recently in South Carolina Review, Bellevue Literary Journal
and Abbey, among others.
Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Mary Kennan Herbert
lived and worked in New Jersey for 16 years, and now is
based in Brooklyn, NY. She teaches literature and writing
at colleges and universities in New York City, and has also
taught in New Jersey, and for many years worked in book
publishing in New Jersey. Three of her collections of poems
and a memoir with poetry have been published by
Ginninderra
Press in Australia, and one book titled "Coasts" was published
last year by Meadow Geese Press in Massachusetts. Ms. Herbert previously won first
prize in
the 1999 poetry competition sponsored by the Midwest
Conference on Christianity and Literature. Her poems have
been published in literary journals in 14 different countries.
Trina Scordo lives in Asbury Park, NJ. She has been published in Long Shot, Beginnings, and her chapbook,
Growing Up Like Jersey was published by Shorepoets 2002.
