BY C. M. GIGLIOTTI
Copyright is held by the author.
sunday may have dawned quiet
we were dead to it
or we tarried under the lights thru apollo‘s lucidity either way we learn to read
in storied faces behind dark glasses
bristling & ungraceful as the throb of a floor
that fills empties fills with each sonar transition
but nothing more than whispers on the train
nobody has to ask
nobody can remember
nobody can forget
the residue of revelry lining the streets
leading to cafés that offer the Spiders or the Velvets
with coffee
oh what the hell a bagel you got more than your steps in
even rising virtuously & scrubbing clean the night is all over us
like the boys we kissed because they were desperate & far from home
& when in some shelled midcity station the last traveller plays
…
baby one more time
thru phone speakers
a supporting cast of church bells chime
the promise of a life of extravagant hope
Reluctant Apology to Kerouac
at first
i can’t stand you
as a mirror
it’s those firecracker devotees
that spook me — hell
you probably loved charlie parker
more than i could ever feel
for another soul
holy
as north country pidgin
but not yet
oh to sit atop the west virginia moon
meanwhile what’s let for me
but to meander the snowy strasse
a stomachful of ambition knotted with
yearning for brazil’s january beachsides
an armful of books of
wearing leather
bound for promised lands
for Paradise in hell
well all right
but i still want ezra pound’s head on a pike
Brunch with a Friend Ater Nearly a Year
We meet at a place I’ve heard about
but never been to. They seat us at a table
fit for six but we sit side by side. Hers arrives
in a squat glass with art in the froth,
mine in a dark bottle on a silver tray. There
is much to discuss. How was her time
in China? What did she think of the birthday
video I sent from my childhood bedroom
mid-December? Did she have a sense
of the richness of the past pulling for her?
She tells me about the one she’ll be visiting
for ten days in a neighbouring country. I tell stories
of the one I’m looking forward to, the one I saw
briefly and wouldn’t mind coming around again.
Dance floors, days of, job openings. It’s the year’s
hottest day so far. We recap big concerts, old-timers
who roll back into town. I drink beer and busk now.
She enjoys living on her own. I won’t get a blessing
from a wasp between the fingers like when I saw her
last — later that evening, it’s a bee on my arm.
***
C. M. Gigliotti is a zillennial multi-hyphenate artist with an MA in English from Central Connecticut State University and a BA in Creative Writing from the Writers Institute at Susquehanna University. Her work has appeared recently in MEMEZINE, Songs of Eretz, and Prose Poems and is forthcoming in Vernacular, Blue Unicorn, and Rough Cut Press. She lives in Berlin.
