Confused for Rising Moon (Valentine’s Eve)

By Pete Simonelli

“It fairly booms down on us tonight
with the sky so clear,
and through us

as if we were ruins, as if we were ghosts.”

–August Kleinzahler

But it wasn’t, on a mid-winter evening, rising
as we made our way in on over the bridge.

Not the moon, no, but a building’s peak light
appearing at a glance out the window
just north of the RFK Bridge,
nearly as round and propped in that too-
fantastical way, low in the sky.

The surprise alone enough
to jot down in a matchbook
even while peering out, or trying
to peer out, from within a new clarity
until you say, “like that,” pointing behind us, “over there?”

Climbing up the backs of skyscrapers,
so yellow, not yet rinsed,
just as the west is melting behind Jersey.

“Look.”

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Solo

By Pete Simonelli

Ana

slips deep

into the corner

of the sofa

lights a smoke

and curls her legs

fast among the crumbs

and coins

saying little

or nothing at all

to withstand

that deepening stare

that whips up

a pass

through anonymous

but inviting

climes

and comes perched

despite

her critical stores

of boredom

One

frail shift

and that

brittle perch

comes undone

collapsing

one blink

at a time

into the low

opiated rumble

since departed from her ears

once she really

snapped to, hissing

shit!

suddenly mindful

of the fresh

nail polish she

daintily avoids

smudging

despite her burning

cigarette

and mother’s

mothering calls

she could

be rising

again

padding barefoot

into her room

like that

shutting the door just

like that

to

him, to

him turning

that strange

blue

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On Spirit

By Pete Simonelli

Long after the music has stopped,
and the people have all gone home,
we can speak of a spirit, Jack
—how, staring into it,
certain memories drift uncontrolled through the vast
and empty room. Tears in Italy, hungry, over a bowl of hot
soup. Neglected in Paris. The Browns
and Steelers game found on a radio, much later
in Greece, where old men remembered your property
as their own once.
Scores of memories roaming above your desk, waiting
for their proper sentence and place.

I’m imagining this, eyes closed, the aromas
of boiled eggs and toast and last night’s beer
lingering in the kitchen, where, suddenly,
she, who’s never been sudden anywhere
or at any time, appears miscast, saying (as if she could
take it back),
“I just shit out a ton of blood,
and I have no idea why.”

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