Gay Giordano

Symphony of Pins

The night surrounds me
its shine the tint of cracked teeth
smoke-filled mouths uttering litanies
beneath the bare bulb of the moon.
Sometimes I feel empty, bereft,
loosened from a mooring I never knew I had
until it dissolved and slithered off.
Men claim bits of me, and I,
parceled off at auction, set about to rearrange myself
into a new form, farther away, unreachable.
I am alone, luminescent in the din of uttered falsehoods
an object set in relief against the black velvet of this nocturne.

The men lounge in the crooks of their arms, one hand each
cradling a beer.  Were it not for the dull yellow electricity
dangling from a bulb overhead, this would seem a re-enactment
of some biblical scene wherein men gather to speak in tongues.
They mutter oaths to themselves, sip through cracked and blackened teeth
gag down their parched throats what words cannot slake,
their immortal souls in a cup of foamless beer.
A cat passes through, its skeleton shifting beneath its sack of fur,
off to hunt a smaller wreck with weaker knees in some nocturnal cellar.
I describe this scene as if it were merely a portrait,
when all the while it is my inner landscape, my spirit,
my every waking moment.


© 2007 Gay Giordano

The Dance

You noted the toppled billboards
advertising small homes,
domesticity doled out in installments
of thirty years, and stomaching no loneliness,
you whispered in the cup of her ear
“Follow me and share my life.”
and she, pale as a plate under the moon’s ball,
succumbed to your invitation.

She arranged the decades to suit you
like flowers from different seasons
inexplicably finding themselves in a vase
together, unable to comprehend how each can live
in such a weather as the other endures.

And now it’s winter and the trees are as naked as dancers
decostumed from some extraordinary performance
appreciated by none but you 
while she, your love, sips from a chipped tea cup
the bitter skin of your phantoms.


© 2007 Gay Giordano

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