John L. Stanizzi has delighted readers and listeners throughout New England and beyond. He is the author of several books of poetry and has had work in The New York Quarterly, Tar River Poetry, Rattle, Freshwater, The Connecticut River Review, and many other publications. Stanizzi has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac,” was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was named Poet of the Year in 1998 by the New England Association of Teachers of English. He is also is a much-admired workshop leader and poetry judge. He teaches English at Manchester Community College and lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.
— Rennie McQuilkin, CT poet laureate
TATTOOS
Unlike the other men in the family, my father
has no chains or skunks with attitude,
or his last name over crossed Italian flags,
no Mom or Born to Ride or broken heart,
no Semper Fi, no naked ladies or dice.
My father has no Jolly Rogers or devils,
no angels, crosses, lions, dragons, or knives.
He has no rosary beads or praying hands,
no Virgin with child, U.S. Army or dove.
My father has no Sacred Heart of Jesus.
But on the inside of his left forearm
there’s one tattoo no bigger than a signature
and the same shade of faded blue as the bruises
that blossom on his papery yellow skin,
and as he sits in his big reclining chair,
smiling vaguely and squeezing a stuffed toy,
I glimpse the washed-out ink that tells the story:
Johnny and Dolly, faded and just about gone.
ROSARY
I knew that every time you limped heavy
into the front room of the crooked,
creaking four-story walk-up
to place an open letter on top of the TV,
I wouldn’t be able to watch cartoons for a week,
or listen to the radio,
or speak above a whisper.
The letters were so thin
I could see my fingers through them,
small ghosts pressing against a flimsy white wall,
and the words were big loops and waves
which were beautiful
though all I understood
was that someone in Italy had died.
Most days it was just the two of us,
and while you spent the day cooking
and baking and washing clothes and praying,
I would count cars out the front window.
Then around noon you would turn
the hard, straight-backed wooden chair
toward the avenue and begin to chant the Rosary,
praying for all the children, your friends,
the saints in heaven, and for your husband, Daniel —
il mio Daniel you sang, il mio Daniel.
I would crawl under your chair and lie on my back,
listening for Daniel’s song,
and the other one, the one to the Blessed Mother —
Santa Maria! Madre di Dio!
your invocation rising to a wail.
I could feel the cars from the avenue
humming in the floorboards under my back,
and as you rocked your body slowly
I held your ankles,
and let you sail me through the tiny apartment
on the feathery back of something Holy —
Santa Maria! —
your knuckled fingers rubbing the beads,
your wrist broken 40 years ago
wrapped in a dish towel —
Madre di Dio! you sang,
and all these years later I think
of the stonework of your Faith,
and the certainty with which you called
to the Virgin that she would take your pain away,
heal your loneliness,
bring you no more beautifully wrought letters,
and give grace to the child beneath the chair.
And She came.
And She rocked you in her arms like a little girl
there in the declining sun
of a June afternoon, 1957,
whispering to you that your wrist would ache,
that Daniel would not return,
that there would be more letters,
and that She would be there with you
now and at the hour of your death,
Amen.
VERY PRETTY
Point O’ Woods, South Lyme, August, 1999
So early in the morning,
and yet too hot for her to walk
even a step or two.
We sit her in a plastic lawn chair,
secure her with a bed sheet
huge and cool around her frail body,
and Ma, elegant and 70 pounds,
waits with apprehension
to be lifted to the top
of forty-seven steep and crooked steps
to the landing that overlooks
the cottage roof where a gull sleeps,
and below that
a sail on jeweled green water.
At the top,
with the sun impatient for 97,
we stand with her a moment
as she looks out on the bay.
Very pretty, she says, very pretty.
And I think of those words
as sweetest memory
the very moment
she is speaking them.
for Katherine Conkling
FAWN
In the carnival of lights and shadows at dawn,
a small bony dog stands in the road,
watching me curiously
from the center line, so I slow for her,
and then I see the dabs of softened white.
Her right ear twitches a wary cautious twitch,
and she lopes into the woods, leaving me with
a sense of joy at seeing this tiny fawn.
But just as I am about to leave, I hear
her squawk, and see her just behind the scrub
at the side of the road, where she is watching me,
her wise and fearful eyes too big for her.
What are you doing, I say, and where is your mother?
She hears my voice, and steps back to the road;
looking me straight in the eyes, she bleats question,
but before I can respond, another car
comes speeding by and off she runs for good,
before I even have the chance to say
that I would lie down near her in the woods
while she slept sheltered on a nest of leaves,
and when her mother returned then I would go,
having kept her safe from the likes of me.
All poems copyright (c) 2017 by John L. Stanizzi
CT Poet Laureate Rennie McQuilkin selects work for CT Poets Corner by invitation.
