LAST WEEK, WHEN IT RAINED

by Alice Campbell Romano

This river savaged my neighbor

poured six feet of water into his basement

water higher than his head

In another house

and another

and another

she slopped up onto the first floor,

onto the boards

onto the rugs

ruthless

No sooner did one neighbor

finish his repairs

after the hurricane—

seventy-five thousand dollars—

than the river

bulged,

swelled,

pooled,

in every room,

floated

his new furniture,

gurgled and laughed

and rose up outside to cover cars

parked on the street

And down the street on the corner

the whole corner is lined with everything

the family who lives in the house on the corner

has to throw away

chairs, a sofa, bookcases, baby beds, cabinets,

whatever was contained in the cabinets,

why name them all? Everything stored

until a time when the family would agree on

what to sell and when, and now there’s nothing but

mush and melted glue and sog.

The river today winks and scintillates

under the bridge, well between her banks

while a few early autumn leaves ride her ripples.

Am I not beautiful, she whispers.

Alice Campbell Romano lived a dozen years in Italy where she adapted Italian movie scripts into English, married a dashing Italian movie-maker, made children, and moved with the family to the U.S., where they built, she wrote, and the children grew. Her poems have appeared in—among other venues—Prometheus Dreaming, Persimmon Tree, Pink Panther Magazine, Orchards Poetry, New Croton Review; Beyond Words, Writing in a Woman's Voice, Quartet Journal, Instant Noodles Devil's Press, Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press. In January, she was awarded HONORABLE MENTION in The Comstock Review's 2022 Chapbook contest, "...not an award that we give every year, but an honor set aside for a few manuscripts." Alice swooned. 

POET LAUREATE ADA LIMON CREATES A POEM TO BE ENGRAVED ON A SPACESHIP

Others invited to include our own names on a chip

by Alice Campbell Romano

https://europa.nasa.gov/message-in-a-bottle/sign-on/

Years ago I bought you a star.
The framed certificate turns up 
now and then
when I sift a desk, weed a bookshelf.
An undistinguished star 
somewhere 
with your name.
You would better have appreciated
my renaming Mars for you, 
red combatant. 

Earth registers stars 
from Earth’s point of view,
assigns coordinates,
sells naming rights.
Maybe only Earth has this compulsion
to brand the infinite.

Our ambition sends craft 
to search out life
on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
We shall leave Earth’s mark— 
in—be astonished—

a poem 
about Earth. Poets ache.

I am tempted without reason
to piggyback, to add me, 
on a microchip
to Europa. 

You didn’t care when I bought you
a star. I will escape for a billion miles,
to the edge of the infinite, in my 
name alone. 

Alice Campbell Romano lived a dozen years in Italy where she adapted Italian movie scripts into English, married a dashing Italian movie-maker, made children, and moved with the family to the U.S., where they built, she wrote, and the children grew. Her poems have appeared in—among other venues—Prometheus Dreaming, Persimmon Tree, Pink Panther Magazine, Orchards Poetry, New Croton Review; Beyond Words, Writing in a Woman's Voice, Quartet Journal, Instant Noodles Devil's Press, Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press. In January, she was awarded HONORABLE MENTION in The Comstock Review's 2022 Chapbook contest, "...not an award that we give every year, but an honor set aside for a few manuscripts." Alice swooned. 

MARCH 27, 2023

by Alice Campbell Romano

Bronxville.

The rain is scant at this very moment, 

sky almost blue, but it comes and goes

in pelting drops. Here, just now, balls bounce 

against air: red, yellow, green, until I see

they decorate a transparent, plastic umbrella,

a dome of delight where safe from random drops

a child dances down the sidewalk. A skinny stick 

of a kid, maybe nine, in a long, silly raincoat 

mom must have insisted upon. But who cares.

School’s out now, the umbrella is fun and

soon I’ll be home to snacks and hugs. Oh,

such strong hugs.

Nashville.

One image stays. A face behind a school bus window.

A child, a little girl, the caption says. Yes, that’s right,

but when I first see the picture, she has no age. Her lips 

are bent, stretched open so wide side-to-side they eat 

into her cheeks. Her chin is a crinkled dimple squashed 

against the glass, her frown pulls a hard vee down 

between her eyes to her hot red nose. Her hand presses 

the glass, pushes away what she left outside. I don’t 

hear her scream. Of course not, I’m looking at a picture

taken from outside the bus. The child is frozen behind 

the window glass in the red heat of wordless pain. She 

may scream, may break down and cry, but not yet. 

The photographer—what astonishing luck—releases

this moment of unbearable distortion—her little face, 

the rest of her life. And now I notice, stenciled above 

the bus window, a descriptor—Emergency Exit. There 

are no emergency exits. Voice the scream for her. Take 

to the streets. Make it so children dance as they go home.

Editor's note: The photograph described in the second section of this poem accompanies Marsha Owens' March 27 prose poem in The New Verse News.

Alice Campbell Romano lived a dozen years in Italy where she adapted Italian movie scripts into English, married a dashing Italian movie-maker, made children, and moved with the family to the U.S., where they built, she wrote, and the children grew. Her poems have appeared in—among other venues—Prometheus Dreaming, Persimmon Tree, Pink Panther Magazine, Orchards Poetry, New Croton Review; Beyond Words, Writing in a Woman's Voice, Quartet Journal, Instant Noodles Devil's Press, Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press. In January, she was awarded HONORABLE MENTION in The Comstock Review's 2022 Chapbook contest, "...not an award that we give every year, but an honor set aside for a few manuscripts." Alice swooned. 

MAKE DINNER WITH THE TELEVISION ON

by Alice Campbell Romano

Photo of @AdamParkhomenko’s family trapped in Ukraine.

Face what you have to face. Chop onions. Let your

eyes sting for the kitchen screen where a city is rubble,

nothing stands, all the ground is chunks of bricks

and stones, a wreckage more extreme even than the

leavings of a tornado the TV showed you last hour.

What does it profit an autocrat, an absolutist,

unless that his obliteration is more terrible than a work

of nature. I am that I am, God the destroyer. Onions

sauté now with sliced red peppers in a little olive oil.

You feel so feeble. But you don’t flip the remote to

California’s Gold. You add the chicken tenders, while a

newscaster tells you what you know. Children starve.

Alice Campbell Romano is a New Yorker who spent more than a decade in Italy, adapting Italian movie scripts into English. Her work has been published in print journals and online, most recently by Willows Wept Review and Ekphrastic Review's Starry Starry Night Anthology; this week in Prometheus Dreaming and forthcoming in Beyond Words.