Jeff Alessandrelli
2 poems
**
Why I Enjoy the Sun and Light Verse
My every fantasy revolves around the virginal.
Take virginal here to mean full
of tempered and tremulous singing,
in the shower or out.
It’s a wonderful life.
Every morning my husband insists upon it.
Kindly forgive him—he was raised by an angry cadre of pan-national bulls.
As such, his faith daily wears off like a sunset
from the bottom floor of a steel mill.
At night he often proselytizes to the forgotten
constellations of the sky while shivering fierce, uncontrollable.
And I enjoy light verse because, like the sun,
its warmth is obvious and inevitable.
I enjoy it because contained within its stanzas
there is often some type of moral, a lesson
to be learned. The sun will soon go out
in 5 billion years. It will triumph
and extinguish itself. Nothing is idealistic,
not the sun, not light verse.
Just like all the rest of it, everything begins,
begins and then ends.
**
A Brief History of 2007
Dumb teachers and free schools.
And I’m walking to work,
taking a shortcut that lasts long
enough to make me 20 minutes late.
There’s a hole in one of my socks.
There’s lint in one of my pockets
and a cheap wristwatch in the other.
In my head there’s a little girl holding her new earrings
up to the cafeteria’s dully ravenous fluorescent light,
wondering why they still won’t
shine bright enough.
When the computer broke in 3rd period today
and it wasn’t in our book
Darren who sits all the way in the back said
Does it really make a difference though? Can’t everyone just kind of see the Mona Lisa without having to really look at it?
We’ll give him shit about that next week for sure.
**
return to sawbuck 4.4
**
Jeff Alessandrelli lives in Lincoln, NE. Recent work of his appears in Denver Quarterly, Portland Review, Handsome, Western Humanities Review, Hotel Amerika, Cream City Review, Laurel Review and Shampoo.
**
Why I Enjoy the Sun and Light Verse
My every fantasy revolves around the virginal.
Take virginal here to mean full
of tempered and tremulous singing,
in the shower or out.
It’s a wonderful life.
Every morning my husband insists upon it.
Kindly forgive him—he was raised by an angry cadre of pan-national bulls.
As such, his faith daily wears off like a sunset
from the bottom floor of a steel mill.
At night he often proselytizes to the forgotten
constellations of the sky while shivering fierce, uncontrollable.
And I enjoy light verse because, like the sun,
its warmth is obvious and inevitable.
I enjoy it because contained within its stanzas
there is often some type of moral, a lesson
to be learned. The sun will soon go out
in 5 billion years. It will triumph
and extinguish itself. Nothing is idealistic,
not the sun, not light verse.
Just like all the rest of it, everything begins,
begins and then ends.
**
A Brief History of 2007
Dumb teachers and free schools.
And I’m walking to work,
taking a shortcut that lasts long
enough to make me 20 minutes late.
There’s a hole in one of my socks.
There’s lint in one of my pockets
and a cheap wristwatch in the other.
In my head there’s a little girl holding her new earrings
up to the cafeteria’s dully ravenous fluorescent light,
wondering why they still won’t
shine bright enough.
When the computer broke in 3rd period today
and it wasn’t in our book
Darren who sits all the way in the back said
Does it really make a difference though? Can’t everyone just kind of see the Mona Lisa without having to really look at it?
We’ll give him shit about that next week for sure.
**
return to sawbuck 4.4
**
Jeff Alessandrelli lives in Lincoln, NE. Recent work of his appears in Denver Quarterly, Portland Review, Handsome, Western Humanities Review, Hotel Amerika, Cream City Review, Laurel Review and Shampoo.
Labels: 4.4, jeff alessandrelli, winter 2010/2011
