Poem: Burnt Sienna

Mark is burnt sienna,
burned and wrought like a serpentine
fox, a lusty red torpor veiled
as a troubadour, a dapper dan
who stole my luster, my zest, my naïve
sheen — I was beige and taupe,
ecru and serene; now I am
brown, almost crayola white with
love handles dangling down, hazel in
my eyes, sipping a hazelnut coffee
just for spite, a greengage by my
side; yelling to be heard, smoothing out
dry, liver spots from my eyes

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Poem: "Forgot to Listen"

Forgot to listen, learned one voice.
Stood erect, a little shaky, stood to one side —
learned to mimic a consuming system,
jamais penetrate, just preserve,
emitted jelly slugs, phage, phage, phage.
Spoke magnificent monotones with glee,
curved a unilateral smile and a sly handshake
grasped. A chuckle and then a dead listen.
Untied a bulbous, enveloping shoe,
engorged, overfolded the dialectician,
held the united sphere and showed the germ.
Proclaimed the world, as mighty metaphysician.
Dissected and stored it all in a little shop,
Plowed through the murk, to the immediate, ethereal top.
image credit: Greig Roselli

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Poem: Mim's Gin

like a flemish still life

     placed

    on the bed George made

    there stands a space of wood that the mattress has provided,

    a bottle of Mim’s Gin,

    bought from Wal-mart,

    placed there like a girl in a pirouette,

    softened by the color of Ticonderogas and sticky notes,

    torn up pieces of magazine, the dried cuticles of fingernails,

    a stained tumbler resting on the side;

    placed there to become there a flemish still life,

    a framed design of cheap, store-bought beauty,

    so it is not moved,

    when tidying up the room,

    but stays there on the edge of the bed,

    half-full;

    their contents — says the voice in your head —

    are to be emptied,

    to drain a hundred miles of frustrated tears

by Greig Roselli

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Poem: "Staten Island Ferry"

View of Governor's Island from the Staten Island Ferry

She clustered her brown self sailing
in a corner amidst friends,
winds and Liberty smiling like a skewed
Mona Lisa
but he, only staring, clutching pewter-like bars,
foam fetching and returning
and he waiting to touch soil anew.

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Poem: "Albanians"

Albanians are beautiful when they sing,
often cupping their hands to their ears, calling out and calling back in,
dressing and standing, cream and burnt umber salad dressing, large black buttons and bright brass horns, topped with cucumber. Even once an accordion, like a squished
banana and I thought I heard a yodel.

They often travel in bands.

The underground is dark and people stare.

She shares my clothes; he leans on my necktie.
Sunken eyes, burnt, but a healthy rest —
she dances with a glare, tightly with her baby there,
around and inside, somewhere. “You dance so well,”
speaking only French and I tugged at my belt.
The little child inside only smiled.
Leaning, cooing, whispering, wooing.
An arching double vision:
the back of a woman and next a headdress with a painful terror —
and I sat up, lightly touching, strewn books, pausing at titles, sighing, with one under my leg and another open with red-letter between the sheets, the part when Harry meets Sally.

A lonely negro girl revitalized and charged —
Netting her hair and saying, “I’ll be right there!”
A nettling neighbor watching, a quick kiss, and parting,
and a lonely girl on the metro to Merode, plaintively chewing at already bitten baked crust as the lights buzz, and I flicker on and off.
This girl dark with a light chin pointed like her mother but hers was larger and doubled.
Black plain true eyes — but soft on luck . . .

Dust and pizza, a broken nose and a boy — no she did not know him —
He jostled from image to image dreaming of Colombia,
Body to body, pressed against already open books, pages tearing, forcing his
persistent shadow to grow and malinger, and I fear death ...
No redemption,
a lingering death as he picks cherries and finds my place.
Tries to place the scales and ribbons, peace back into place,
I lie side by side, he green and supine, a coconut and Borden’s mix of smooth, trace pale fingers and rest like a pillow, crying on naivete, like a spread napkin soaked, and he spreads. Speak about love and friendship but I remember I have an appointment.

Another he. He fell from a high tower and held Christ in his body shrieking all the way; his mother had asked: “Do you believe in God” hoping for salvation — though it was only a conversation. Why would you ask such a question?

But Colombia’s tears only trace and map a morose tale and look —
While other girls prim their hair, thinking of shiny boys and plump bellies,
I shake as the station nears by. She had already eaten her crust.
Colombia is only a memory but I hang a photo of Christ, a double vision and Albanians forever and ever woo me with their smiles.

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Poem: "Sitting with Marian"

Between: a world, a planet, a zone. Space.

I utter. My mechanical parts interrelate, talk


despite my feeble trippings as my words fill then empty.

Logos ensconced by my feeble trippings, my lack of grammar 

the television, splintered, only silence, a silencing of vacuous

plenty. In the space, in the planet, a vestibule to solemnize words.


I am stuck in an oeuvre of oils. Meaning hisses, whispers

out of my dying bones. Tears, discovery of despondency, to see


intent in your blinking windows, compassion. A receptivity,

found only in children, in JackÕs lithe idiosyncrasy,


do I see in your stale exterior, your crisp(y) skin,

burned from within. My paranoid hands, your exhausted dry


red peppers, your tired raw shrimp lips, burdensome attire,

giant leaden feet, heavy, overbearing space.

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Short Story: "Immanence in the Backseat"

"Immanence in the Backseat" is a short story by Greig Roselli (© 2007)

Ashes and Snow, Gregory Colbert

    
Driving, we saw dogs. We saw them on a rural highway, in a white Volvo. The driver was an adult. The sky was partly cloudy. We had just driven past the firehouse. In the passenger seat I could tell there was a dog and in the backseat was a pack of dogs, all no older than Old Yeller or Prince Hal or the Prince and the Pauper. I could discern them through the tinted brown of their window. The dogs in the back moved in syncopated motion. Their heads jerked back intermittently. It was a combination of the spurting movement of their car and their own unmitigated energy. Our brown discolored Toyota was filled with music; my friend and I were talking about a novel I had been reading for my graduate seminar on Animals and Literature. It was about a woman and her chance, violent encounter with a cockroach. Kind of like Kafka’s Metamorphosis.