John L. Stanizzi

Cinque poesie

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Learning to Dance

for Mary Clemewell Young -- October 16, 1997

 

One of these days

I’m going to meet myself

coming around a corner

Clem Young, from her poem For Certain

 

“To love a person is to learn the song in their heart 

and sing it to them when they have forgotten.” 

- Arne Garborg on Alzheimer’s

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1.   September 1974

 

The clipper moon rose

filling night’s darkest spots 

with pearl light,

light by which we might read,

rich light in which we might even

try to speak

though we did not know how.

 

In a dark room 

filled with dancing children 

Clem danced with herself 

close to the music -

I soon discovered 

that this was the way it would be.

 

It was not bitterly cold yet

though the leaves had fallen

and windblown papers plotted 

with their tumbling

maps as delicate and graceful 

as they were uncertain. 

 

She took my words  

and told me to dance too...

not with her, 

but with myself -

then she fluttered

about the room

as delicate as a lacewing

dancing the impossible possible.

 

2.   1975-1988

 

The house will crumble and the books will burn.

They are at ease in the shelter of a mind

 

And the house is of the mind and they and time,

Together, all together.

 

Wallace Stevens -- The Auroras of Autumn
 

The front door opened 

on dusky shadows -

these she would hand us

if we gave her

a quick embrace

and the quiet sounds 

of our voices...

 

She then handed us her house – 

the smooth angles 

of the kitchen table,

the pale blue air,

the pastel smudges

the cats rubbed onto corners...

the living room

where she kept our poems

near the fireplace - 

O how we believed 

our young words

also crackled and burned...

 

The door of the porch 

opened on sunlight and gardens

deer dappled with rain

and a path leading            somewhere...

 

We were born here 

again and again, 

believing in 

everything...

 

3.   December 21, 1990 

 

At the still point of the turning world.  Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is...

..Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

 

T.S. Eliot -- Burnt Norton

 

I did not think about it then

but I should have realized how difficult

one single moment can be.

Odds are this would happen -

it was undeniable.

 

On my wedding day - 

also her birthday -

we danced to some crazy fast rocker

and Clem put on a good show

pretending to dance with me

though after I thought about it a moment

I realized I was, in fact,

dancing with myself.

 

4.   October, 1995 

 

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

 

Mary Oliver -- In Blackwater Woods

 

eensy weensy spider

went up the water spout…

The farther away she went

the louder she sang -

 

She loved so much,

the joy it gave her unmistakable

 

Now…I love it, too.

 

It was a chilly autumn evening

the scent of yet another 

of her dinners

exquisite in every way

redolent and yet 

as utterly imperceptible

as oxygen

 

She needed to dance;

I could tell by the way she

crowded the radio

and sang the words, smiling broadly

 

So we danced

while she searched 

for something very important

and I hunted frantically 

trying to find either of us

the wind, the clipper moon,

in the red and yellow hills...

 

...and I was thinking...

 

…here we are -

Clem and me

me standing here

ablaze with memories, 

explosions in the middle of 

otherwise perfect days - 

 

Clem over there beaming

telling me yet again…

 

…dance with yourself

in the wind and leaves

under that moon

and in its sheer light...

dance there,

and everywhere...

dance...

 

Sitting By the Window Before Dawn

 

Sittings at my desk an hour before dawn

half of my body blank

the other half tumultuous

light encroaching

on my white shirt 

beginning to cast a little light onto the darkness

 

The night which had filled in

each tiny square of the screen

never coloring outside the lines

blacker than black

is sluggishly pulling its way

toward the country of light

 

I am binary

one side of me a playing card

the other side a different card

and every day I spend time wondering

if this the me that began as me

or is this the me

I have created

 

The blank page on the desk

a rectangular cloud

a cough of wind

held down by

the tonnage of silence

works to make its way

into my mind

where it is, at least,

raucous and chancy

 

Turn the blank page over

the other side is scribbled 

and crossed out

and senseless

this side also rests on the desktop

although it has flatlined

 

The screen begins to brighten faintly

silhouettes of trees behind it

and I wonder,

like always,

Who is in charge – 

The blank page banging against my head

with nothing to say

or the lifeless page that

if you study it

you will make out

centuries past 

well before any voice arose

which spoke sensibly

at least more comprehensibly

than the wind in the high trees

or the voices arguing in the kitchen

shortly after midnight

 

Walking, Pretending It's Not There

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Depression is like a war – you either win or die trying.

-Anonymous

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1

 

On any morning

yes even a dry sunny dawn

with something resembling

a cool breeze 

anyone who is able

might remark on its grip

that constriction around the neck

like the clutch of a gale around 

a sapling’s throat

 

It will seize you with alacrity

and then just as quickly

let you go

stepping back and grinning

at the terror it has engendered

 

It may take a while for you to recover

so don’t waste your time with anger

It loves anger

anger is its signal to redouble the game

whether you’re driving or on a train

or gripping the silver pole on a bus

trying with all the strength you ever had

to keep yourself tethered to earth 

it will be there

 

2

 

It is so good to hear that you’re feeling a bit better today,

but please, let’s not discuss it.

 

Let’s talk about anything else, anything,

anything except the fact that it’s right there,

 

smiling broadly, even menacingly,

its gait a little heavy, dragging its right foot

but still in perfect step with you

 

Endeavor to Breach the Anxiety

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“To love is to be afraid. You are frightened,

deathly terrified, that something will happen

to those you love […] And love enslaves us all.

for you cannot have love without fear.”  [1927]

-Marie Lu

 

Lordotic roofs and

what fear holds you from the door,

spire in the snow sky?

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John L. Stanizzi is author of the collections Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits, Chants, Sundowning, POND, and The Tree That Lights The Way Home.

 

Besides appearing in Danse Macabre, John’s work has been widely published including the journals Prairie Schooner, The Cortland Review, American Life in Poetry, Praxis, Rust & Moth, The New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, The Laurel Review, The Caribbean Writer, Blue Mountain Review, Tar River, Poetlore, Rattle, Hawk & Handsaw, Plainsongs, Potato Soup Journal, and many others. 

 

His work has been translated into Italian and appears widely in Italy, including in El Ghibli, The Journal of Italian Translations Bonafini, Poetarium, and others.  His translator is the Italian poet, Angela D’Ambra. 

 

His nonfiction has been published in Literature and Belief, Stone Coast Review, Ovunque Siamo, Adelaide, Scarlet Leaf, Evening Street, Praxis, Potato Soup Journal, The Red Lemon, after the pause, and others.  Potato Soup Journal named his story Pants “The Best of 2020” and it appeared in their anthology as part of their celebration of their “Best of 2020” Edition.

 

John is the Flash Fiction Editor of Abstract Magazine TV, and he has read at venues all over New England, including the Mystic Arts Café, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Hartford Stage, and many others. John has read at these, and many more venues. 

 

For many years, John coordinated the Fresh Voices Poetry Competition for Young Poets at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, Connecticut.  He was also a “teaching artist” for the national poetry recitation contest, Poetry Out Loud; he spent a decade with Poetry Out Loud.  

 

A former Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, and New England Poet of the Year (1998), John has just been awarded an Artist Fellowship in Creative Non-Fiction – 2021 - from the Connecticut Office of the Arts and Culture for work on his new memoir. 

 

He teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, Connecticut, and lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry, CT. https://www.johnlstanizzi.com

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