Poetry: Spring Comes To The Neighborhood (1976)

Spring Comes to the Neighborhood (1976)

 

                                   

My neighbor is naked to the waist,

roaming the streets

in his trash, junk jeans,

and wrapped in his

pale yellow winter skin.

 

I refuse to acknowledge him

but instead lie in this caricature of grass

among flashes of leftover tinsel,

gimcrack from the last merry circus

that forced everyone

to look for part-time jobs,

and I think,

I’ll hook up with someone

in a  secret place where alien music

is elegance in our ears,

and makes the air sticky

and us sticky

so when we greet each other

all of them must stick their noses in 

as if they’re gawping

at some terrible accident

at the intersection

of this, that, and the other thing.

 

In the yard 

the gas stove altar for the sacrament of dust,

is positioned precisely where empty shoes

worship the shadowy insides 

of an ancient bell

and a jukebox 

blasts silence so disturbing

it unnerves the normal goings on

of the neighborhood—

gone are the days of snickersnee,

the posing as a bumfuzzled father figure,

no more eel-pulling, shin kicking, or mother dropping….

 

I only mention these things

because spring has just arrived,

the neighbors have begun to move about

and the only compulsion

is the compulsion

to flee

 

 

 

 

 

John L. Stanizzi is the author of Chants, Sundowning, POND, and twelve other poetry collections. A frequent contributor to Anxiety, his work has also appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Cortland Review, Rattle, The New York Quarterly, and other journals. His nonfiction has been published in Literature and Belief, Ovunque Siamo, and elsewhere. A former Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, Stanizzi was named New England Poet of the Year and has been nominated for Best of the Net; his creative nonfiction piece “Pants” was selected as a Best of 2021. He taught literature for 26 years and directed theater for 16, and has read his work at venues throughout New England. Stanizzi lives in Coventry, Connecticut, with his wife, Carol.