poems by Natalie Crick

Sunday School

Madeline loves it
And sits as Mother would.
The priest is like her Father
Dressed all in grey,

Palms fluttering with
Paper clowns,
Legs and arms spinning anti-clockwise
Like the priest's eyes slide

From side to side.
We are his for an hour
But he cannot touch us,
For we are jewels to be watched,

And, one day taken.
Nobody has ever held his hand
But Grandmother, with rings like
Little girl's warnings.

Alfonso Colasuonno

80-YEAR-OLD WOMAN IN THE INDIAN RESTAURANT

You used to be a librarian

At Brooklyn Public and NYPL

You live on Avenue M and Ocean

And you got robbed

But it was your fault, really

You probably shouldn't have kept the door open

Even if it is a Jewish neighborhood

And you like this place

But there are better places around

But you like to come out here

Cause you used to live around here

And you are heading off soon

To go to the library

To borrow a Victor Borge tape

Oh, you know him

What's that you said?

I'm sorry, I can't hear you

New Yorkers hate when I ask them to repeat themselves

You said you watched him when you were eight

At your aunt's on Nostrand

Terrible thing, he escaped from Denmark

Funny, but such an odd sense of humor

Just like my cousin

Also a comedian

I think the library still has his

What do you call them?

Yes, records.

  

FLATLANDS

If I listen closely

I think I can discern

The death rattles

of Old Brooklyn

Over here, in this little idyll

Where American flags still fly

In front of detached one families

The sprinklers turning on and off

Soaking well-manicured lawns

I can hear the pangs

In the abandoned synagogue

Shuttered pizzeria

And proceeding out of

The mouth of the old drunk

That one with the faint brogue

Leaning against the door

Of Mickey Reilly's bar

Who Colleen serving up the Guinness

Tells me has to call a cab nightly

To take him to his home

on Schenectady Avenue

To rejoin his dog, old

His wife, old

His son, grown, around on the holidays

His TV, on, the news, Letterman

I can see the decay

In the lines on the forehead

Of the fiftysomething Jew

Double parked on East 51st

Waterfalls playing on his tape deck

The model 1994 too

I can feel it wither

In the hands of the old Italian

Ashing his cigarette

By the swings in Power Playground

Hands that once kneaded dough

For the best pizzeria

On all of Avenue N

Before he sold it to the Albanians

Who in time will sell it to the Mexicans

And they still dance in their best suits

Over at the American Legion

And Greekie still serves

The eggs and toast just right at George's

But the last yachts off the Paerdegat

Will all sail off in their sunset

On their way to Jersey shores

The sons of displaced migrants

From Cork, Naples, and Riga

Displacing themselves yet again.

ON MOVING TO RURAL WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA

I’m becoming more and more like him every day

The babyface won’t last forever

And my fuse is shorter now

I’m turning into a foreign man of foreign ways

And I’ve withdrawn for the most part

I’m prone to joy

And prone to rage, just like him

I guess I’m an immigrant too

I’ve journeyed to some queer land

Where the people are odd

We’re all strange though, in his mind

Their ways aren’t my ways

But I won’t look back

He never did

I don’t incline my head in the direction of the old country

That’s just a memory to me

Just old Polaroids that have grown yellow and frayed

Still, the displacement rattles my bones

I wonder how it affects him

We all must have known it at some point

Even the wife’s Congregationalist forebears, centuries ago

I can understand them

And I can understand him

I found a new nation here

And I’ve made sure to try to blend in

I don’t speak - my accent marks me

I have my own enclave, just like him

I talk when I’m there, with my people

I tell stories about the pop of a Spaldeen off a broomstick,

Summers playing in the stream of a Johnny pump,

And how the August sun melted the chocolate cones from Joe B’s truck

I always make it sound better than it really was

I’m sure they’ll understand me out here

Just like they understand him back there

I wave, greet them with a friendly “hello”

And they don’t walk on by

It’s on 322 -

Take a left,

A right,

And place your foot gently on the brake.

FLANNERY O’CONNOR

 

 

 

 

He calls out,

stenciled on a Chinese immigrant’s tee shirt,

at a strip mall,

in a town off I-80,

and I sit down to a meal of white rice,

wonton soup,

chicken and broccoli,

and those little crunchy noodle things,

a fortune cookie,

Sprite instead of oolong tea,

this ain’t fine dining,

a rest stop off I-80,

that stencil on a Chinese immigrant’s tee shirt,

I bow my head,

take a breath,

eat and drink.

I am the co-founder and Poetry Editor of Beautiful / Losers Magazine (http://beautifullosersmagazine.wordpress.com). My fiction and poetry have been published in Zygote in My Coffee, The Camel Saloon, Citizens for Decent Literature, ppigpenn, Gutter Eloquence, Horror Sleaze Trash, Dead Snakes, Yellow Mama, Quail Bell Magazine, I Am Not A Silent Poet, Rusty Truck, Pink Litter, The Galway Review, Record Magazine, Soul Fountain, Randomly Accessed Poetics, Winamop, Visceral Uterus, Fuck Art Let's Dance, O Sweet Flowery Roses, Pretty Owl Poetry, The Milo Review, Postcard Shorts, and Farther Stars Than These. I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Beloit College, where I learned under esteemed poet Bei Dao.