Joe Dolce: Three poems

Chess Player

 

Pawns are the soul of chess.

—Philidor, World Chess Champion, Paris 1773

 

I visited Estonia just

after the Soviets left

liberation tactile.

300,000 voices strong,

a Singing Revolution,

brought a quarter of all Estonians

into Tallinn Arena for strictly

forbidden national songs and hymns.

 

On the street schnitzels &

boiled potatoes cost a dollar,

the depleted local grocery

had two cabbages & a few beetroots.

 

I found a rare and magnificent old

Russian chess set in a second hand shop.

After paying $100 cash to a red-

bearded Goliath reclining in half-

shadow behind the counter I heard

him sneer in broken

English—

 

I don’t need little pieces.

I play you in head.

 

You could have heard a pawn

 

drop.

 

I suspect he was loath to sell

the precious old set.

Joe Dolce

The Jimmy Leg

The torso arm the phantom limb

the itch that just won’t segue

the ticklings that refuse to stop

you got the Jimmy Leg

the urge to move the antsy

the pin and needle flag

the fall asleep sciatica

you got the Jimmy Leg

the restless and abrupt totter

a circadian rhythm lag

the Parkinson nod and wag

you got the Jimmy Leg

the leaping and contractions

the daytime sleepy nag

a crawling feeling in the skin

you got the Jimmy Leg

the sudden jolt wide awake

the sleep depriving dreg

the narcolepsy powder keg

you got the Jimmy Leg

the hypnic twist around and jerk

the sleep-loss twitching rag

the fall into oblivion

you got the Jimmy Leg.

Joe Dolce

Kinetoscope Beating

My father hitting small child of me split

selves one cat-jumping upwards to safety

looking down the other crushed to kitchen floor

staring up at a giant wearing Death

five senses five sponges soak up

cold linoleum against cheek the bloom

of my mother’s red mouth mute

her Maidenform whispering through blue angora

her eyes fear teary

I taste salt and dusty floor detergent

inhaling kitchen fragrances & Old Spice

the Marx Brothers shout from front room tv

my own screaming fetus position

folding inward an anemone

his coarse skinned hand

reverberating off my body

the two camera positions of split selves

splice perspective cuts

accelerating shuddering oscillations

as we shake together again into one child

my anxious mother bending over me

I see him flickering through the doorway

like some great ghost animal vanishing into the blind

and I am in focus again.

Joe Dolce