The Space Between 50 and 20
by GARY STEVEN CORSERI
She leans into her needlework and sees
Assisi rising in the silken strands,
her body like a question mark, at ease,
as though she wove her answers with her hands.
Then, with a thought, she rises into flight,
leaving the air quivering behind her,
so one might guess that she were made of light,
dancing around a memory’s whisper.
She comes back nonchalant, with a bouquet
of nothing but a smile, and youthful blooms
she places in a vase—as if to say,
These are my selves, whose fragrance fills these rooms.
And then her slender fingers weave, and know
the years between us, gathered like the snow.
Sunflowers (How Language Is Learned)
by GARY STEVEN CORSERI
“Girasole,” Italians say, accent
on soul; “g” as in gyro; the last
syllable, lay–a medieval song.
In my uncle’s garden there were many
(heads taller than I, taller even than
the tomato plants he trained to staves
heading towards trellises of overhead vines
from which he squeezed—sweet!—
grapes’ wine-dark blood).
But these were golden, star-petaled; serene,
somehow; yet…, eerie–how they tracked the sun.
(I thought—in my six years: They track me, too!)
If they could know the sun’s intent,
know where to turn, compassed to light,
easy to know a small boy’s wondering!
Behind their sheriffs’ golden badges
atop their tall, green stems,
they knew I looked; looked back;
and looked beyond.
And I thought: They are pieces of the sun,
dreaming of returning.
Now, in my dreams’ carousels,
spinning their mutable, chocolate-clock faces,
they turn in the words learned without learning:
In il cuore del mio cuore–i girasoli–
(in the heart of my heart—sunflowers–)
turning…, returning. …
Rilke’s Angels
by GARY STEVEN CORSERI
Rilke’s angels, in the hovering air,
just beyond us, whispering, stir
curtains of memories, parting to reveal
the ever-present, ever-loved, who will
us toward them, as toward a destined shore.
We cannot see, or hear, how they implore
our footsteps, or how they intervene–
brushing with diaphonous wings unseen
contrarieties–, only feel their presence
in the timeless, in the glimmering sense
we share, as master and apprentice.
There, in the falling sun’s gold-garnet space,
fringing the clouds, they wait, weaving,
like sunbeams–themselves, and us: the living
and the dead (or, more-than-living); with faith,
filling our lungs with their wings, like breath.
Gary Steven Corseri has taught in US public schools and prisons, and at US and Japanese universities. His prose and poems have appeared at The New York Times, CounterPunch, City Lights Review, The Village Voice, Dissident Voice, L.A. Progressive and hundreds of other periodicals and websites worldwide. His dramas have been produced on Atlanta-PBS, and he has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum. He has published books of poetry, and the novels, A Fine Excess and Holy Grail, Holy Grail. He can be contacted at Gary_Corseri@comcast.net.
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