Frank Matagrano: Featured Poet, Winter 2001

A CLOUD IN THE SHAPE OF MY EX-

Brunch doesn't go by without at least one person falling in love

with the waitress. I'd spend a lifetime listening to the specials.

If I had any say in the menu, I would order five extra minutes

of her time and talk about immense things like rain and the shape

of clouds -- one in particular I didn't stop adoring even after it changed

into a dog with one leg over a rock -- before the food arrives

and complexity overwhelms us both, trying to fit the plate

without knocking over the little tin of cream. If you saw how composed

the flap jacks were in the midst of all our struggle to make space,

you would understand. I am shameless. I would do anything

for a refill. When I say "please," I mean more,

and when I say "thanks," I mean thanks. I am filled

with gratitude to anyone who knows what to do

during a thunder shower. I used a newspaper to get this far.

I was told to lie down rather than stand

under an oak; I stood under a doorway. My tie

ruined, I waited, I rested against what brick hurt the least.

Frank Matagrano

MY DAUGHTER, THE BOOKMARK

Bonita pulls the band around her head to show how one wears a mask

during an emergency. A book sits on my lap, its mouth is closed.

I have two lives: one in New York, another in Chicago. Excuse me

if I repeat myself, sometimes I can't remember what I just said.

In the book, a man suddenly forgot his name on the train to the office

one morning, he lost his briefcase, he held a cell phone for dear life.

I use a photo to keep page: a baby girl in a red dress, a stuffed yellow

bird

to her left. The book sits on my lap, its mouth closed, the spine worn

from so much bending. Bonita has dark roots, she points

to the exit signs. I have only myself to blame for not paying attention.

I am thinking about the Greeks: their masks were made of flour paste,

woolen string held the colors up so the last row could see

the expression. One kind of play involved water, two acts were

surrounded by it, the third went down in flames -- it's a way to rebuild

what's exhausted. The man was found by cops curled in a fetal position

on the floor, drenched in sweat, clasping the cell phone to his chest.

I try to budget my life on a napkin, Bonita gives everyone a packet

of cashews, I live one month at a time. This much goes to the roof

over my head, this much to soap, this much to long distance phone calls

between the two cities. I worry whenever I leave one for the other,

its mouth is shut, I am afraid of missing a connection

from one flight to the next. I wouldn't know what to do

other than assume the position of my worst sin,

my head between my legs, thinking about what would have happened

if I didn't drag all three kinds of affection to the gate at once:

philia stuffed in a coat pocket, eros in a wallet, agape on my mind.

God forbid the color fades a bit, if a corner bends. Did I mention

Euripides -- his plots drifted, his pace dragged, he took potshots

at the gods, all of his characters were in one kind of pain or another.

My hands do nothing but argue, they complain if there's excess

baggage, they blister at the thought of weight. I carry no more

than one bag from place to place, cram four or five

lives in a small space: a wooden leg, a heart-shaped

box, an Italian tie, khakis with a coffee stain, a section

of a newspaper. Each one wears a different set of eyes, a hole serves

as pupil, it's a way to see. I use a photo to keep page.

Frank Matagrano

ON BUSINESS FOR THREE DAYS IN INDIANA

All roads in Indianapolis lead

to Heaven with purgatorial stops

at a Marriott every twenty six miles,

third room from the elevator, fourth floor,

Do not Disturb on the inside knob,

coffee pot near the sink in the far corner,

a letter in longhand on the desk,

a census of words never said aloud,

too many to fit in a hotel envelope.

White starch long sleeve presses and hung

in the closet near the door, one tie

black with aqua swirls, a Paul Rodan,

the one grandma preferred, worn

to her burial, straightened in the back seat

before stepping onto the curb

at the marble steps of St. Lucy's,

standing in last place behind Anthony,

in front of him, his uncle, my father,

the left side of her casket hard, heavy,

beautiful on our shoulders.

Frank Matagrano

(first appeared in The Melic Review)

PROVIDING THE ELEGY

Dog would rather dig a hole in the yard than run

around with the dead in his mouth. He is looking

to me for a hand. My face has color for the first time

this August. I start with two verbs picked up

in catholic school -- that was over twenty years ago

when anyone who mattered was blindfolded in Iran.

Deliver this bird, O Lord. Forgive the window

for its overwhelming clarity. I begin with the idea

that this sparrow made every effort to find a balance

between the world in which he lived and the private

life he carried from branch to branch. Who knew

that Carter was a poet. Who would have thought

Khomeini didn't want to wage war against women.

If I stare long enough into the light, I am convinced

the stress will make me weep, even if just a bit,

so something that imitates a feeling can be paid

and I can explain -- with an emotion borrowed

from my parents' dream, a hangover from their War

that involved the odd combination of fresh cut grass

and gasoline -- how it was sheer hope that made

the transition from inflation to voodoo easier

and not just the cool inflection of the actor who asked

Are you better of than you were four years ago.

The bird's heart, quiet like sleep, collapsed inward --

as if trying to protect a fortune found while sifting

through rice in the back lot of a Chinese restaurant:

an onion will be another man's water lily, or maybe

our greatest danger will be someone else's stupidity --

its limp wing looking like a sheaf of brown paper,

rolled over hardwood floor and taped down

to catch spackle, dried in the hole where a nail

once pinned two infant angels to the wall,

one with arms folded, the other with chin rested on hand,

their eyes raised to the top left of the frame, backs to Sistene

clouds piled, folded, rolling from one end of God to the other.

Frank Matagrano

SAVING HACKENSACK, NEW JERSEY

For the last decade, I've done my best thinking

surrounded by ice. Depending on the season,

I have to fly a thousand miles north of this city

to find a little snow so I can sit for an hour

and think of skin, how it cracks in the cold,

how it breaks under pressure, how it bleeds.

When I return, I stand on a roof top

and count street lights until I am full of silence.

There's always a cat screaming for milk;

I hear everything, I have to live with this

even if a red cape isn't draped over my shoulders.

I'm holding a flower for dear life,

I don't know what kind, I should know

better than to mix affection with duty.

Forgive me, Lois, for my white shirt and stutter,

for the square-rimmed specs, for making you wait

by the hot dog vendor. I am a liar, I'm dying to talk,

I have a hundred stories - it's hard to believe

any of them - don't even get me started

on Hackensack. God knows what would've surfaced

if its iron lung was ripped open by explosives:

a stained handkerchief, a partial denture, a coffee

pot, a bowl without sugar, a limp wing, a cracked piece

of china, one sock, one shoe, a scorched mattress.

There would have been a little truth - for me at least - a little

rest from all of this jumping. I'm thinking about

what it's like to walk down Fifth Avenue -- any street,

really -- with a crutch, my balance

ruined by my own sweet failure.

Frank Matagrano

(first appeared in Exquisite Corpse)

SELF PORTRAIT WITH OPEN WINDOW

If I shiver a little, it's from lying

so close to an open window and not

from the chill that comes

with late night thinking.

Tonight I think I will let myself be

a little more human than usual and go

over my early affections and wrongs.

I will carry an extra blanket with me

and two pillows, one for each life,

and set myself under a maple outside

a brick house. There's a Hallmark bauble

flush thin on a bedroom sill, an electric candle

under a paisley gown. It will be too dim to notice

how everything I adored years ago gained

weight or wrinkled a bit. I prefer the sycamore

over the maple: it breeds by breaking

a branch, its ka taken by mouth to fight ring worm,

its wood impervious to water. I am reminded of little

Zacchaeus who climbed one to catch a glimpse

of loveliness. One of my lives is jealous

of his greed; the other just fawns over his lunch

with Jesus, how Zacchaeus sat there

for hours with Him, discussing kindness and sin.

Give or take a month, that trinket in the window

will be replaced and I must once again go

out of the way to find another metaphor

for providence. I will argue

with myself over what things can be reduced

to a thread, what can be tied into a square knot

and what can be worn from place to place

around the ankle or bound to the wrist.

I will turn over every fifteen minutes

for fear my two lives will begin

to point the finger at one another.

Frank Matagrano

WAITING WITH ALEXANDRIA FOR HER MOM

I didn't take the bus to Blooming Glen, Pennsylvania and sit

with Alexandria in a booth at Ruby Red's for nothing.

She had no idea how much I adored the ride - I carried

two books with me, one of them a dictionary, I didn't check

a word in it. I recited Lincoln. Of everyone that passed,

the kid in a mini-van made a point; with a finger he told me

to fuck myself. I think the white collar and the blue

tie pissed him off. I was trying to give one life a rest

and resume the other one, my top button was undone,

there's a start. I didn't understand how to open the window

in case of an emergency. I followed the lines along my palm,

one went back to New York, God knows where

the rest went. The other book had everything I needed

to know about protest - one man stitched his lips shut,

another tried to drive a nail through his own palm;

they were heading to ministry; no one there could be reached

for comment. I want to describe the mouth as "tender,"

I mean well, there aren't too many other ways

to explain the white sores along the gum that come

with a denture, my Four score and seven years slurred,

the tongue caught in a small nitch between the plate

and the roof whenever it shifted to roll an "r." I loved

one phrase in particular, I was attached.

Frank Matagrano