May 5th (Poem against Ornamentation)
Using too many adjectives
is no different than leaving
the price tag
on
a designer sports jacket
you purchased second hand.
This has been said before
and better.
Let us instead study
the way the mountains
interrupt the blue’s solidity of sky.
Study orangeradish horseshoe
wool water
weather.
Portland, Poland, Portugal—
Let us contemplate
how we exist
in places that once
did not have names.
July 12th
Childhood is expecting
honey oozing
from a tree,
sawdust from a flower’s
newly shorn petals.
To understand science as the way
the wind is silent,
the world it sidles into
very very loud.
Morning by morning, actualizing
a single Everything but the Kitchen Sink
Jumbo Jellybean™
into an entire meal.
That a dog’s tail is music,
conducting an orchestra
in time with sounds
and visions
only it can hear.
See?
When I sprinted as a child
I was so fast my legs seemed wings.
Adulthood, its artificial wash,
the color of my bright blue eyes
were once beady
brown, it’s true.
Their hue was accepted
by everyone, especially myself.
Adulthood’s artificial wash—
Who are you?
And why are you here?
20/20
1.
The party was a puddle of vodka.
I lost my glasses,
met the Vice-President of Chocolate,
the Undersecretary of Corrugated Cardboard
and Iron, Prime Minister of Heavy,
Rollicking Wind.
The Ouija board instructed us
to ask God why
it’s called a soul patch.
By way of murmurs
and moans
from the bathroom,
God answered.
30% a little boy sitting all alone
at the back of the bus,
60% swimming
in some ever-mysterious lake,
10% dead, in the kitchen
I hummed beneath
the fluorescent’s hum.
At the party mirth
came quickly,
in the form of capsules, bottles,
pipes and teeny shrubs.
Mirth came.
Mirth came and—
2.
Love was such an easy game
to play. Every time
is the first
time every time.
Why don’t we
do it, do it in the road?
Not beneath the crotch of a rotting
apple tree but next to the cool green
summer grass,
in the withered shadows.
It’s dark, very dark,
and I’ve lost my glasses.
Why don’t we,
why don’t—
When you whisper
I love the words
I can’t hear,
precious lack of articulation,
weighted breathing
of your breath.
Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of the full-length collection THIS LAST TIME WILL BE THE FIRST. Other work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, and four chapbooks. The name of Jeff's dog is Beckett Long Snout. The name of Jeff's press is Dikembe Press.