Joe Dolce: Six Poems

Thirty-Seventh Anniversary Poem
for Lin van Hek

 

The fifth lucky Prime.

Atomic number of Rubidium.

Normal human body temperature—Celsius.

Dylan Thomas, Rimbaud and Byron died at 37.

International dialing code of Germany and the Vatican.

Genesis 37: the account of Joseph’s Dreams.

Symbol of the Christ.

Number of miracles in the Bible.

Numerical value of I Am, in Hebrew.

The Royal Star of the Bull, in Numerology,

the “do-it-yourself” number.

37 million speak Spanish in US.

37th week, “Jinx Week”, the week before Term, in pregnancy.

37th Infantry, the Hunt Regiment,

part-time Citizen’s Militia Force, responsible,

for defense of Australian mainland, after the Great War.

Regulation 37, of Australian Road Rules:

“Driver must not begin U-turn without clear view of approaching traffic.”

The Hindenburg took 37 seconds to burn,

in 1937, the year Amelia Earhart vanished.

37 seconds between sighting the iceberg and Titanic collision.

37 holes in the mouthpiece of a telephone.

American Express numbers begin with 37.

The number of vertebrae in a Tyrannosaurus Rex’s tail.

The number of elephants Hannibal brought to conquer Rome.

The number of plays Shakespeare wrote.

Cool Hand Luke’s prison number.

37th ASCII character is %.

The age of Mariam Nabatanzi, a Ugandan woman,

who gave birth to 38 children,

six sets of twins, four sets of triplets,

three sets of quadruples—

ten girls, twenty-eight boys.

Joe Dolce

 

A Rune of One’s Own

Aching of gallstones.

Virginia Woolf’s coat pockets?

Not enough to drown.

Joe Dolce

 

 

Kissing Grandma

Slowly, the sea, of black suits

and mourning dresses, parted,

allowing the small boy through,

the prone woman there on view,

a daughter holding his hand;

his mother. He kneels down,

on carpeted stair, staring

at old fingers, rosary.

The abyss of coffin falls

away, the child staggering

down dark vertigo,

clinging to the larger hand.

It’s alright, honey, say ’bye

to Nana—his mother’s voice,

thin, choked, in her suffering,

the elder woman, once large,

now compressed into a black-

boxed rectangle of Lily,

the impossibly large breasts,

gone girlish, pressed and flattened,

this cold relic, not quite her.

What is missing? Her laughter,

as she leads small me downstairs,

to basement kitchen, fragrant

with frying perch, oil, sauces,

a white stove, and coal furnace,

the canning room, where bottles

of yellow peppers, peaches,

tomatoes, cellar light-lit,

under low ceiling, a round

eating table, the plastic

protecting the embroidered

and full-bodied linen cloth,

sewn during her hard war years—

four sons left home, to fight, three

returned, my tears fell into

every stitch, she told me.

No crying now, my eyes wide

wondering watching fixed to

horror silence mystery.

It is her but it is not.

The grandma part has drained out.

Kiss her now, and say goodbye—

my mother’s voice so soft,

so high, above my bowed head,

I lean across polished wood,

gripping the cold brass handle,

my smaller lips brushing hers,

briefly tasting foundation,

as I’m gently pulled away.

Joe Dolce

 

 

 

Fairweather’s Garden

after Gethsemane, by Ian Fairweather

 

Four years prisoner-of-World-War-I camps,

captured by Germans, in France, (his parents

left him a toddler, returning for him,

a ten-year-old), peeking from cubism,

climbing bamboo barbs of calligraphy,

depression often his black prayer, he knelt

in Darwin, in abandoned boats and trucks,

escaped crucifixion, on the rough raft

he built, sailing to Indonesia.

They thought he was lost, but he saved himself,

and died, was buried, on the third day rose,

lived, till he was eighty-two, on Bribie.

Joe Dolce

 

Ekphrasis

after The Recital, by Sam Fullbrook

Hatchings, striations and soft figurations,

confetti storms of teal and tone,

buffet the elegantly dressed musicians,

he, at Steinway, she, apparently, in mid-vowel.

In the audience, the last of the bush brushmen,

cane-cutter, stockman, cantankerous keeper

of a stable of twenty racehorses (survivor

of his first wife’s suicide, but not his own cancer) listens,

half his mind (Fraser rejected his cartoon portrait of Kerr)

already elsewhere (a fire, in the 70s, destroyed half a life’s work)

with shapes, strokes that he will make of this later.

Joe Dolce

 

Birthday Limerick for Michele Seminara

McCartney sang Michelle, ma belle,
in praise of a mademoiselle,

though Donne would agree,
la belle tolls for thee,

for birthdays, choose Dante: raise Hell!

 

Joe Dolce