Chris Tonelli
3 poems
**
Prologue to a Song of Marriage
In the myth, your catching up
doesn't seem to be an option.
We'll see. For now,
it is important to realize
that our life together
is inside this black gate
running for it.
Perhaps that was what Orpheus mistook:
his mortal self for his heavenly gift.
Like the bloated hydrangeas
dozing in the August humidity.
I assume, muse, that you're
the heavenly one here.
How could I turn back toward you
in light of such historic suffering.
**
Driving Home from My Grandfather's Interment
The tugboat guides the barge
under the Tappan Zee Bridge,
past the half-lit homes
dotting the edge of the river.
We've been stuck in traffic
for a while now
watching the massive Hudson
carve the Palisades—
the dark dolerite cliffs
shoved out over the water,
as if their rising brought on night.
No sun now but an internal one,
the going day illuminated only
from beneath the water's surface.
I should have changed clothes.
Like a trapped fly batting itself
against the windows, my black
suit buzzes. Maybe it is
sadness, though I am not sad.
It feels like I couldn't miss
anyone. Maybe I am smuggling
something from the ceremony,
something from death
back across the border of life.
Why won't rivers eventually
cut the world in half?
**
Fire Going Out. Fire / Going On.
..........after Wallace Stevens
A poem begins
as a block of silence.
It is not something
built up
in the silence, not
something created.
It is the result
of a deterioration,
the loss of an ability—
to miss someone
for example.
X once said that if we
just keep speaking,
if we just keep
putting words
into the air, we are all
bound to meet again.
X, if you are listening,
you should
let doubt creep in.
Poems are not made
of place holders
that stay long enough
to fall in love w/.
No one can take care
of anybody else.
When you see
shadows of pigeons,
don't look up
for obvious reasons.
**
return to sawbuck 1.3
**
Chris Tonelli lives in Cambridge, MA where he runs The So and So Series. His poems, essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in H_NGM_N, Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks, Good Foot, Kulture Vulture, Typo, Drunken Boat, Inch, Word For/Word, Verse, RealPoetik, New York Quarterly, Sonora Review, Asheville Poetry Review, GutCult, LIT, and Redivider. His work will also be appearing in the anthologies The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel – Second Floor and Outside Voices' 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets. His chapbook, WIDE TREE: Short Poems, is available from Kitchen Press.
**
Prologue to a Song of Marriage
In the myth, your catching up
doesn't seem to be an option.
We'll see. For now,
it is important to realize
that our life together
is inside this black gate
running for it.
Perhaps that was what Orpheus mistook:
his mortal self for his heavenly gift.
Like the bloated hydrangeas
dozing in the August humidity.
I assume, muse, that you're
the heavenly one here.
How could I turn back toward you
in light of such historic suffering.
**
Driving Home from My Grandfather's Interment
The tugboat guides the barge
under the Tappan Zee Bridge,
past the half-lit homes
dotting the edge of the river.
We've been stuck in traffic
for a while now
watching the massive Hudson
carve the Palisades—
the dark dolerite cliffs
shoved out over the water,
as if their rising brought on night.
No sun now but an internal one,
the going day illuminated only
from beneath the water's surface.
I should have changed clothes.
Like a trapped fly batting itself
against the windows, my black
suit buzzes. Maybe it is
sadness, though I am not sad.
It feels like I couldn't miss
anyone. Maybe I am smuggling
something from the ceremony,
something from death
back across the border of life.
Why won't rivers eventually
cut the world in half?
**
Fire Going Out. Fire / Going On.
..........after Wallace Stevens
A poem begins
as a block of silence.
It is not something
built up
in the silence, not
something created.
It is the result
of a deterioration,
the loss of an ability—
to miss someone
for example.
X once said that if we
just keep speaking,
if we just keep
putting words
into the air, we are all
bound to meet again.
X, if you are listening,
you should
let doubt creep in.
Poems are not made
of place holders
that stay long enough
to fall in love w/.
No one can take care
of anybody else.
When you see
shadows of pigeons,
don't look up
for obvious reasons.
**
return to sawbuck 1.3
**
Chris Tonelli lives in Cambridge, MA where he runs The So and So Series. His poems, essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in H_NGM_N, Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks, Good Foot, Kulture Vulture, Typo, Drunken Boat, Inch, Word For/Word, Verse, RealPoetik, New York Quarterly, Sonora Review, Asheville Poetry Review, GutCult, LIT, and Redivider. His work will also be appearing in the anthologies The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel – Second Floor and Outside Voices' 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets. His chapbook, WIDE TREE: Short Poems, is available from Kitchen Press.
