by Paul Renato Toppo
Down at the fireplace the shadows throw
little missives,
at the base of a titanium heart
while the bloodless thumping
beneath the roots
caves to its own echo, and ends, each wave
overtaking the effortless wake
shutting out light
tight,
against a hurricane of tears
Amid bemused and bewildered black contractions,
he arrives and ejaculates at the Superdome,
perfecting,
articulating
a Fox with eyes like rubies of the thousand points of light
which mutate into a kinder and gentler
hyena
killed
inside cages of water,
(because wrath must reach out
to kiss even Parishes
of the soul),
they rattled their pistol-hot bone chains,
the moist air carried footnotes from a sax, down
to the 9th ward, as if
a riff
would suffice
(ne c'est pas, cher?)
to save their black asses.
Time around frames
the dark with blue
and rises
and so forth
through the branches toward
where the hummingbird was stilled
by a machine gun
Here I wait for the bus to the day
before yesterday
I'm strung along in semicircles,
by politics
in
fat
evenings with bored looks
Nancy Grace
and dead babies
that flash for a moment on screens
of the subconscious
Time to fly to the eye:
voices slide like a sleet of sorrow
vague and silly,
presidential
I feel pressure, a refinement of
gravity whose hue
I never knew
couldn't be bribed but
could clap bones on a drumhead,
so violently
independent
of the country
of the three-fifths
of themselves.
Now, he
calls the twitching toads down to a pious lunch
with cookie sheet Gospel music,
while horses reappear on Bourbon Street,
born again the electric atmosphere that
Conjured the exceedingly small love
which may play underneath,
banging skin
hard enough to raise the dead.
Born 1959 and raised in the New York city area, Paul Renato Toppo graduated from the University of Connecticut with degrees in Chemistry and Mathematics. He has lived in Spain, Puerto Rico and México and currently works in Trenton, New Jersey, but spends half the year in Mexico City with his son, who continues to be his adoration.
