Anthony DeGregorio

(For SE & MB) A Private Poem

by Anthony DeGregorio

Inside the car, only our breath, the sound, the warmth, the smell.

No talk, no pleasant rain or sun against the windshield or side windows.

No penetrating drift of fresh-cut grass bludgeoning the senses.

Only the thick assault of ourselves, the quiet suspicion

Of another’s exhalation inhaled. Mingled and separate. Warm and cool. Swallowed.

Hands spreading against safety glass, against outside air

Pressing in through the crack of open windows.

My mouth tasted of stomach acid and unease, French Fries consumed in a rush hours ago.

Hers of Tic Tacs and Cherry Cokes, makeup licked from an upper lip, the corners of her mouth.

The faster she drives, the more I feel I’m suffocating. The wind

Against my face hung out the window like a dog making it impossible to breathe.

Where are we going? (I am afraid to ask.)

I feel safest in complete darkness.

The inside of the car hued green with the dash until she shuts the lights.

III

It is then I wonder if this is how it all ends. Or begins.

Will we drive so far that there really is no going back?

No returning to before I lost my mind,

Before the first time

She tried to drive off a bridge

To save us both.

Before swerving

90º perpendicular

To oncoming traffic.

Late August Afternoon on the Porch Reading Charles Simic

By Anthony DeGregorio

For years I have regularly dreamed of elopement with a forest.

Our fall into each other’s soul as soundless as it is furtive.

First and foremost we’d begin our new life

Far away, hidden from everyone

Who would do us wrong. Light years from every maleficent essence.

No longer would I look over my shoulder

For the various debt collectors I seem to attract

To whom by their calculations at least

I am in arrears on payments, goods, and

Promised personal services of all sorts.

No longer would she fear the stray lightning bolt

Threatening to demolish the innocents within and beneath her trees.

We are quite well matched.

It is only as Christmas approaches that I turn melancholic.

Drawn to run up further huge debts

Stemming from obsessive generosity and good will.

Charging my life away to department stores and online offers.

Not to mention a rash of TV enticements,

Tempting with lifelong installment plans.

And she, though she’ll be hesitant to admit it at first,

Secretly awaits a family with a bow saw

Pursuing that perfect tree for their bare living room

To shelter all the beautifully wrapped gifts

And curtain the 5 stockings hung, anticipating

The eager hands of children and impatient spirits

Craving chocolate, various states of consciousness,

Socks, and revelations. Yes.

But please know we both embrace sacrifice.

We realize our dreams are only worth dreaming

If we never wake up, and are

Thereby never disappointed again.

Alligator

by Anthony DeGregorio

I dreamed there was an alligator in the house. Not this house, my childhood home. By the back door in the kitchen leading to the backyard. He stood with me at my side, both of us looking out over the rock littered dirt and grass patches, the grounds of our games and adventures. The 1/8 acre slanted at a precarious angle leading beyond suburbia’s oblivion, mapping the path he had travelled to get to my house and would retrace to return to nowhere. For a moment we were pals staring into the abyss of the future before we realized we could not be together like that. Could not peer either into unshared memory of decades ago when a prehistoric-looking creature could have been my companion and the fear of his nature never entered my mind.

Storm Poem

by Anthony DeGregorio

The light in the neighbor’s house is muted yellow, as if they have replaced their bulbs with dusk’s filament twitching through electric candles. The attic’s dormer is illuminated behind small curtains. A figure moves side to side, approaches the window, never spreads the curtains. Looking out at the storm, the outline of a face turns upward to the darkening sky and flying leaves, the bending branches contorting, threatening to break. The face is searching for its twin within the sheets of rain pouring a drenched apparition.

REHAB

by Anthony DeGregorio

“In keeping with the situation!”

(—Mrs. Dilber, Ebenezer Scrooge’s housekeeper)

Phase 1

In the rehab gym the exercise physiologist

asks a patient if he knows where he is.

His answer may be ambiguous.

Delivered in a deep-dream-distant voice muffled as sleep talk,

the inaudibility exacerbating the ambiguity.

Neither patient nor staff member understands or grasps the meaning

or its myriad implications of life, death, and/or time.

Phase 2

On another exercise bike a participant

(to my left, I believe) wonders aloud,

very concerned, why she is not making any progress

vis-á-vis distance, i.e., lessening the space

between the locker room and herself

as she frantically peddles faster.

What would normally be considered

just a snickered insensitive remark

someone makes about her confusion

takes on greater meaning, existentially speaking.

Phase 3

It becomes increasingly unclear whether my legs

are peddling forward, backward, vertically, or horizontally.

Until the bike appears to lift off the floor

and flip over, somewhat changing my perspective.

In keeping with the situation

of stationary motion and travel

in alternative dimensions

I ask for a neurologist

specializing in colors,

specifically those of speed,

mass, and time, and

practicing exclusively therein,

as I silently compose a formal inquiry

re: the future and the past,

completely ignoring the present,

as well as place and space

in my mentally accommodated document

destined for interplanetary fame.

Anthony DeGregorio’s writing has appeared or is scheduled to appear in various publications, including Libre, Abandoned Mine, Italian America Magazine, Aromatica Poetica, Bloom, Nowhere, Wales Haiku Journal, Polu Texni, and So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.

He taught writing at Manhattanville College for twenty years, and in another life or two or three he worked in various capacities for the Department of Social Services, much of that time while teaching at night. Prior to that is anyone’s guess, but don’t let that stop you.