| Chris Sabatelli |
A Not to My Son A ball of paper, you were taken fromthe pocket of your mother, a suddenly scribbled note, the number of someone forgotten and never called, the remnants of a poem in pants just washed. Pulpy hair pressed into the watermark of eyes so new to the light, your damp spine curled round like stone, stalling air spilled in across your tongue.I watched as you were unballed, as they pulled crumpled knees out from your chest, unfolded elbows into arms, stretching your body carefully out, exposed skin still boldly blank of years, and with still damp hands put my arms around your pages unfolded. |
| Copyright 2007 Red Pulp Underground |
203 West 81st Street The patina of this brass season rubs clean under the first polish of fall, until green is gone and only twigs and trunks mark the distance between Amsterdam and Broadway. Here, on this block, a fire burned when I was a child. The flames grew into the night like weeds in an untended window-box, and the sky was lush with smoke. Firemen threw furniture from fifth-floor flames, the cindered skeletons splintering in the street below. In the morning, the thick tang lingered in the halls; coke towered above glassless windows. The Super boarded the empty sockets, and we moved away, a family without a mother. But, I am not here to see this building again or the smudgeless new windows shawling the Hayden Planetarium. I am here to buy bread from Zabar’s and eat dinner at the Flor de Mayo. I am here for the familiar. |
Piffle On this street is a house made of limestone and curves. The stone has begun to turn goldand dusk touches it with wavering patches of browns and blacks just under the eaves, and the other shaded places. It has no neighbors; the smaller houses that crowd each other, in the honeycomb of streets, give wide berth to this one. On either side a mass of weeds grows waist-high, and in the spring they are abloom with Campanula and Hyacinth that hem the air with fragrance. The bees gather there in armies, singing as they work. No one lives there; the boy ran to the city years ago, his mother blanched in his absence. He left a note for her. It read "I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to fall in love. I've been sitting here and thinking it over and I'm going to do it. I can only find love in the city." He had been a silent boy, not as deep as he had been given credit for; no great underlying purpose lay in his habitual silence, and he had no definite plan for his life. He wasn't particularly interested in what was going on, and sometimes wondered if he would ever be particularly interested in anything. He just went away, the house even emptier than before. After his mother's death he might have returned, might have pulled down the catbrier clawing the exterior, might have seasoned behind the stone walls. But, now only the bees keep company with the house, singing the sustained song of labor. |
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