{"id":3431,"date":"2011-07-07T18:30:40","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T18:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sporkpress.com\/poetry\/?p=171"},"modified":"2011-07-07T18:30:40","modified_gmt":"2011-07-07T18:30:40","slug":"three-poems-by-frank-montesonti-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/2011\/07\/07\/three-poems-by-frank-montesonti-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Three poems by Frank Montesonti"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOVE POEM! #2<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

Darling! Remember the night you were so beautiful you made six stoplights flower!
\nWe missed the flight. So we took the train. Tolstoy<\/p>\n

liked trains! Tolstoy threw
\nhis heroine under what he loved. Tolstoy
\nsaw a behemoth walking through Russia, over peasants, cold and huge as history, and all I get are these damn trust fund kids outside the bar talking about their plans to go to Buenos Aries!<\/p>\n

Someone tell them cupidity sounds more adorable than it is. I wish my chest were a barn so I could run around with a lantern inside me. Without you, the night feels dark
\nas a cutpurse\u2019s conscious. Love! Show me your hand! I won\u2019t spit in your palm this time. I won\u2019t speak of the dead
\n          in un-stratified payscales nested soundly in the ground, I won\u2019t demand
\nto know why pine nuts are so expensive. I won\u2019t collapse! Tonight, standing<\/p>\n

by that New York Post newsstand. You look like lessons
\nfor sailing home.<\/p>\n

God, did you design that couple making out by the tropical plant, a collapsed lung, the shrimpy tidewaters, the muted church bells of rain on metal trash can lids? Morning-light on your crossword puzzle, four down,<\/p>\n

I think is \u201churley-burley\u201d for \u201ca commotion\u201d. Darling, where\u2019s that pound of ground beef? I need to judge how much the cat weighs! Leaves fall to the lower-most sadness. <\/p>\n

Music when we walk. Would you like to be a name sleuth? Okay, guess my name! Then to the ocean. Bright by watching dark waves! It\u2019s a private party, Seagull.<\/p>\n

Even with eyes on both sides of year head,
\nstill, private. You\u2019ve got to believe this world is easy, or it\u2019s so hard to go. Stained-glass moon through oak branches.<\/p>\n

Looking at your naked, sleeping body the words \u201cAgainst Chaos\u201d
\nappeared on your chest! Outside two albino pigeons rise into God\u2019s blue radar!<\/p>\n

The brigand moon. <\/p>\n

I sat on your couch and watched the smoke from my cigarette build a little rope to the ceiling.
\nFor a moment felt like a lighthouse, a lighthouse that guards nothing dangerous.<\/p>\n

Then you came into the room backlit by kitchen-light, holding a plum and an apple.<\/p>\n

O paper ships! If only you suffered from paper fires!<\/p>\n

&nbsp<\/div>\n

——<\/p>\n

Blackout Chef<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

I had a friend whose father,
\nevery night, after coming home
\nfrom looking for work
\nwould sit down at the kitchen
\ntable and with medical accuracy<\/p>\n

pour six shots of vodka
\ninto six glasses and drink them
\none per minute. Then he
\nwould stand, open a bottle of wine<\/p>\n

and start cooking in his little
\nbasement apartment,
\nwhich he rented after the divorce,
\nuntil his memory lifted away<\/p>\n

like a silk sheet off a lamp.
\nIn the brightness, starved of himself,
\nhe grew so hungry
\nhe would prepare elaborate<\/p>\n

meals: New York Strip steaks
\na perfect medium,
\nroasted lamb with rosemary and mint,
\ntomato and cilantro gazpacho.<\/p>\n

He must have staggered through
\nthe bright aisles of the grocery
\nrooting around the crisper
\nfor kale while Sheryl Crow<\/p>\n

played overhead or slurred to
\nthe manager about the lack
\nof fresh tarragon. In his bright, warm
\nkitchen with the snow piled<\/p>\n

above the basement windows
\nin the winter months when the sun
\nwould set at five PM, he pulled his face
\nfrom the steam of the pots,<\/p>\n

wrinkled in an expression
\nof joy in the preparing things
\nthat made sense, but the next morning,
\nhe would wake to find it all there<\/p>\n

untouched, gleaming on plates,
\nhis night work, having appeared seemingly
\nfrom nowhere\u2014 from someone<\/p>\n

who had the things he lacked in life:
\nexpression, taste, inspiration,
\nlove, the power
\nto wake up the next morning,<\/p>\n

someone else.<\/p>\n

&nbsp<\/div>\n

——<\/p>\n

Inventors of Sadness Learn to Use What They Have the Wrong Ways<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

Bereft of injury, bad parenting, civil war,
\ndeath in the family, extreme phobias,
\npsychological trauma,
\nnot convinced I was abducted in some field
\nin Iowa and told the golden truth of the world;<\/p>\n

having side-stepped the factories of brutal
\npoverty; the Midwest; not attaching
\nthe same part to the same part\u2014<\/p>\n

Tomorrow, bicycle\u2019s maybe by the Spree,
\nhaving partaken of petting
\nthe fat underbelly of a puppy,
\nliving in a democracy of sorts<\/p>\n

where the cherry trees
\nin Mauer Park blow their
\nleaves up pale and pink past<\/p>\n

my window like eraser dust.
\nEverything reduced
\nto brightness. Nights blooming quietly,
\nYvonne twisting in the sheets,
\nthe moon safely nailed to sky.<\/p>\n

And tonight the man across the courtyard
\nis playing the piano, slow, Chopin\u2019s
\nNocturne in C minor I think<\/p>\n

and the wind touches the leaves
\nof the trees so softly
\nI barely hear them shake. Yes, no one knows
\nI am the Edison of my day,<\/p>\n

dumpy in my chair by the window,
\nwith only a few regrets, a lost love
\nor two for gears, that tonight
\nI have done it!<\/p>\n

Can you hear the machine turning?<\/p>\n

From almost no parts
\nat all: I have found a way to be unhappy.<\/p>\n

&nbsp<\/div>\n

——<\/p>\n

Frank Montesonti<\/strong>, former Tucsonian, through pluck, luck, and vigor, has published in journals such as Black Warrior Review<\/i>, Poet Lore<\/i>, AQR<\/i>, Poems and Plays<\/i>, DIAGRAM<\/i>, 42 Opus<\/i>, Drunken Boat<\/i>, Lit<\/i>, and Spork<\/i> (issue 2.2) among many others. His chapbook A Civic Pageant<\/i> is available through Black Lawrence Press. He lives in Los Angeles, California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOVE POEM! #2 Darling! Remember the night you were so beautiful you made six stoplights flower! We missed the flight. So we took the train. Tolstoy liked trains! Tolstoy threw his heroine under what he loved. Tolstoy saw a behemoth walking through Russia, over peasants, cold and huge as history, and all I get are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}