The Literary Review
toward hibernation
out of her drawer hangs
the waistband of faded jeans
alive in the furnace’s heat;
heels of slippers crawl from under the bed;
an old sweatshirt is their legless body.
her soft snore is really the pillow returning dreams.
perfect birthplace of a morning
still dark with night and the uncolor of warm sleep.
i leave this
for work,
fresh and new
as spring
dipping its toes
into winter’s water.
i flick on the headlights,
i start the dull ache,
i cringe through an audible swallow,
blinking through shivers
that erupt from my bones,
and look into
the insanity
of the drooling day.
- Livio Farallo
patriots
stars and stripes on bingo cards and/
a caterwauling and/
a field of loud loyalty and/
an american public spread thin
as thought in church pulpits and/
b-something and i-something and/
the n-word from a loser and/
fingers busy eyes busy smoke and/
a vocabulary of seventy-five numbers and/
a flag by declaration hallelujah and/
god says “it’s good to spend money
with me” and/
betsy ross falls off the chair
of her gentle sewing pose and/
thimbles scatter as mad stars
in the rocket’s red glare and/
a long needle sticks through
her bloomers and/
a long streak bleeds down her leg and/
the pattern will have to do and/
“look,” she adds, “what does it matter,
it’s still about empire?” and/
opiates come in many forms and/
g-something and o-something and/
beer and smoke and salute
when the night’s over and/
tell your wife “screw the politicians,
I’m not voting” and/
this of course goddamn it is what you
fought for/
- Livio Farallo
self-made man
scared
of what he bets
on the lottery
his wife
laying out morning clothes
for years
paralyzed
when she wasn’t there
one day
undressed
for the rest of his wealthy life.
- Livio Farallo
tranquilizers and other institutions
at life’s beginning,
understanding hieroglyphics
is a nasty frontier
obvious as an urge
to burn a dream
to charcoal and smoke.
and armed with ashes
of possibilities
and summers
of wintry hope,
you light an unfiltered cigarette
to the memory of achy time
with fingers
that always flip
to the last chapter;
fingers that have grown old
without growing up,
leaving seasons
unmoved.
and naïve.
and sensitive
as arthritic knuckles,
thinking disfigurement
has no odor,
selling pain
that never belonged to them
in that room where books lie
open. and
day after day
the olympic efforts of light
to move in a straight line
while at the same time
avoiding the crumbling rosetta stones
of your hands,
go unnoticed.
- Livio Farallo
the way it is
waters off antarctica
and
dens of bears
are
questionable regions
often
steered clear of;
unlike
canyon echoes;
so much more
tourist friendly,
so much more
doffing night
to
cries of wimpy discovery
to
powerful punches
unable
to
empty the oceans
or
fill the air.
fumes of the city
unite compass points;
birds
bind landscapes
with
migrations;
winds
come together
coincidentally
and offer
innocence and rain
when
no one asked a single cloud
for a story.
- Livio Farallo
old soldiers
a bird calls
the anniversary
to order.
two bony hands
reaching from bed to bed
across years
sanguine enough
to still taste the sirens of the second world war;
where first they met
and second finally married,
with no one else in between.
dry wrinkled fingers
reaching across
these cold tiles
groping warmly
for each other,
touching.
tears wetting pillows,
knowing only that
they have to fall,
filling
an abysmal space
bridged
by soft eyes locking in the
whispering of honeymoons
and other deep memories.
small smiles twitching
and foamy at the edges,
hair
the white of winter straw.
new year’s eve
times square
1945,
when they married.
today,
the same countdown,
when their blood is pushed along
with nowhere to go,
the survival of two recruits
fetaled in a foxhole,
the only response to war.
- Livio Farallo