All we know about our grandfather,
He may or may not have been in Detroit
Some time during The Great Depression
And that he might have been called Harry.
It’s purported he liked to play the horses.
It is alleged police alleged he did favors
For someone who did favors
For someone who did favors for Black Bill.
My grandfather may or may not have heard
Duke Ellington at the Paradise Theater.
He may or may not have met Joe Misery
Or shook the hand of Charles Lucky…
All we can say about our grandfather,
He was suspected on the grounds
Suspicion incriminates presumption.
All we can say about our grandfather,
He survived among thieves—it is alleged.
Poetry
Intrinsic Worth
A poem is unsalable.
It can’t perform a single task.
Don’t ask it to tell a story
It will lead you on an odyssey.
Don’t ask it to light a fire,
It might just start an inferno.
Don’t ask it to build a birdhouse,
It’ll sing like the head of a nail.
Don’t ask it to seal a sundeck,
It would rather rot in the rain
And leap from the sun.
The Idea of Ancestry
Everything changes in Iceland,
Sons walk into the valley of their bones,
Daughters reappear from the hidden land
Wearing necklaces of rain,
Wives run off with giant Icelanders
Who are the world’s strongest men.
You wake in some living dream,
See ghosts in abandoned farmhouses,
See your hair fall, forget place of birth,
Pour over Icelandic atlases
For maps of energy and remote names
That seem familiar from another life.
One more endless night of light.
One more axe blow cracks the ice.
How is it you find yourself
On a Viking ship? Why is it burning?
Who were you? Where are you going?
Paradox
Having known this dock since childhood
I know the first section is nearly infinite;
Fish after fish after star were born there
And my shadow grew out over the water.
I know the second section is truly infinite
Because we fished in the eye of the sun.
I know the oldest, infinitely infinite section,
Mid dock after the second oldest
Broke free in a storm and was re-attached,
Was like fishing in another dimension,
Existing between two places that can’t exist.
Your Move
At a party a disgruntled poet lashed out at me. A month earlier he asked me to read his voluminous collection of chess poems. All chess poems. I was polite. I praised. I suggested he start sharing his poems, self-publish, get them out there– sharing your poems is a good way of growing as an artist. That didn’t prove to be praise enough. At the party he went on the attack. “And what do you do? Share poems with crazy people on Facebook!” I had never thought of my friends as such. Maybe I was crazy. I looked at him and thought— “how crazy are you.”
Love in the Catacombs
Alone with her among mummies
Pegged to walls in period clothes,
Gruesome as their living counterparts
Must have seemed to lovers then,
Soon enough each other we touch,
Among skull and bone mosaics
And friars spying round corners
With devils riding their backs,
We nick a moment of passion
From damned eternity in this crypt.
At the start of voices we must stop.
At the possibility of prosecution
We heed a prudency of practical sense.
The monks can have memento mori,
Their truth has vulgar demands.
We climb out of the underworld
And wash our feet in an ancient river,
Forgetting darkness and silence
For the light and traffic of life,
For our bed and room
With its wide windows on the sea.
When we wake we discover
Love shining into darkness like the sun.
Francesca
Francesca and Francesca and Francesca
All the Francescas in my life are beautiful
Are stubborn and fierce and free
All are made out of the clay
God whispered with three syllables
Santa Rosalia
Monte Pellegrino in sea fog.
The streets of the city in shrouds.
Fierce grief and black wings
From hidden balconies.
Santa Rosalia! Santuzza!
A village girl has died!
Santa Rosalia! A girl like you!
She dreamt of black grapes.
She heard the howl of a sick dog.
Santa Rosalia! Santuzza!
Giuseppina has died!
They are washing her feet.
She wears a coral necklace
And a red ribbon in her hair.
Santa Rosalia! Santuzza!
The guests are throwing corn
And carrying trays of food.
Giuseppina! Who is waiting
For you in the casa nuova?
Candles by the bed,
Serenading from the street.
Santa Rosalia! Santuzza!
The almonds are bitter
In the mouth of the groom.
He heard the bell and the clock
Of the church chime together
And a voice whispered: “It is she.”
Santa Rosalia! Santuzza!
The groom has gone to the mountains
With a torch of orange blossoms.
He cannot mourn.
He has gone to the mountain.
Santa Rosalia! Santuzza!
The mother of the bride
Is tearing out her hair.
Giuseppina is sleeping.
They have fed her honey
But she will not awaken.
They have brought her lilies;
She will not awaken.
Santa Rosalia! Santuzza!
A girl from the village has died!
Madame Butterfly
In my rendering of Madame Butterfly
There is no heartbreak and suicide.
Through panel rooms the sound of waves.
On a silk screen, the blue moonlight.
One gust of wind and it is spring.
Butterfly wings flutter on bronze,
The temple bells are ringing,
Flower and song flow into one.
No gods appear in the libretto.
No tear drop moistens a sleeve,
No ceremonial dagger falls to the floor,
No shadow feast will be served.
All night the nightingale floor is singing.
My Life in Opera
Growing up in a house of pain,
You sacrifice everything for love.
Like the time my uncle tore open his shirt
And begged his brothers
To let him return to the love
He left in Buenos Aires,
Like the time my mother
Was scratching at her eyes,
Like the time my father both raged and wept.
Days were scenes without direction.
One day a cousin would stab herself
Or an aunt jump from a tower.
I didn’t know what was real;
But what passionate singing I heard,
Tenors, sopranos, baritones–
All around me in full voice;
And there I was, in love with Tosca,
Condemned to death,
And just twelve years old.
Salvatore Ala 