The Spire
John Penola
For Joe & Dad
Cover by Joseph A. Penola III
Prelude .4
The Mezzanine .6
The Spire .11
The Photographs .23
Their Echoes .31
Prelude
unlock your door and forget
everything that happened
this is like the beginning
only with fewer goodbyes
sometimes the world
looks more brilliant blurred
The Mezzanine
you find him on the downbeat
stuck in staccato circles
like cogs in an antique music box
dragging the time between notes
the dented metal spools
and warped piano-finger prongs
plucked as rafters muted chords
he fell among their teeth
the rest which made the music
between conductor and captain
while bare feet crush flashbulbs
you catch orange floodlight
and throw back constellations
a zodiac cast in asphalt and glass
between the dotted lines
where gods and coins are lost
like reflections in fish eyes
where the shadows are
paved uneven as skinned knees
gliding twelve stories high
an archer starves in flecks
within your halogen halo
they hammer the stage warm
even without the spotlight
pulling trap doors out of focus
your slippers give like gums
before you sneak out the back
or slide from fraying toe shoes
pink threads in pirouette
to nails preserved in wood blocks
where knuckles knot upon grain
the ventriloquist screams
encore from the mezzanine
your name crawls like an infant
to bottomless applause
his palms sting for days
locked and loaded soldiers left
with captains full of shrapnel
behind glowing cut-outs
you count only empty seats
like sheep through curtains
the masquerade will be
forgotten by february
those years of rehearsal
vanish with the patrons
The Spire
the knotted conch spiraled out
he prodded the soundÕs source
turning back smooth pink folds
its echoes amplified and pearl
dampened by jammed knuckles
which used to funnel in like smoke
but now catch on shrinking curves
to carry three heartbeats
the hollow now a part of him
and he apart from the hollow
to smash the spire
there will be no apology
long gone the color of wine
the loose strands all that is left
brown arches reaching their roots
in tiny tin lock box mausoleums
keeping bandits from spoiled
words crawling from hong kong
slow as the moles below the ocean
committed too long to tunnels
built too narrow too fast
like a thread on his tongue
your hair not all that has died
in the still valley of his pillow
breathing deeper sleep
he follows their way down
awaking in someone elseÕs dream
sprouting from the backs of trees
pigeons carry postcards from ocean liners
blurred pictures from an open freight car
far from manhattan skyscrapers
a place where passing wheat
becomes a single yellow brushstroke
your filthy fingers reach for his
hands which hold no stains
though your bodies push the brink of rags
the order of frames rearranged
shifts his stow-away tenses
bursting hair back while trains
leave before they come
thousands of miles away
driven through low hanging clouds
although he was not captain
looking over the vesselÕs stern
he waited for his stubborn compass
to cast its needle to a country
that speaks in tongues where throats
scratch from swallowed cats
swollen in adamÕs apple folds
treading water like the grit in his pocket
until layer upon layer coats it in pearl
an iridescent pair of lost keys
to the unseen apartments
where saucers of milk are left
so they can find their way back
to a thirty minute commitment
his spots cannot camouflage
heÕs become hand-fed
no one else sees her
and few feathers float intact
belly up by the breakers like a
swollen lily sprouting from sea foam
he pushed her back through cracks
where waves left catfish puddles
in crags and dents with tails tempting
fasting angels to slick black-top
beaks collapse in cut time
like hollow points on flak jackets
how long they leech upon her
until another plummets and sees
her taste left in toothless mouths
lingering like the tide
no one depends upon him
aboard half-abandoned ships
his coughs spew powder bones
in storms of spore clouds
thick as horseflies above
bodies splayed as rainfall
their thin shreds veil
the smiles which shatter
seashells where air circles
a bird eating fish that ate her
they sing as suns set
the cat that made it out alive
the grit that was always cyst
pulse upon waves and current
they wonÕt let their chorus go
he forgot to thank you
separate skies catch the glare
between sunsets the paintings still
border both sides fixed in frame
wrist flicks separate seagulls
from single lines that could have been
waves as easy as the street vendor
signatures from third-world countries
youÕll mule them for miles
the light bulbs that drag her back
babies that stay bald and wide-eyed
with smiles as frail as fingernails
he pulls them out at once
so they can grow back stronger
rolling their teeth like dice on tile
he canÕt be as lucky
as those children dying
the snowflakes make no sound
while they forfeit symmetry
driving jagged arms into jagged arms
bayonets that break windows
melt and blur to maintain the brink
like leaves suspended uncertain
beneath every untouched snowdrift
where they wait on their mark
between the rotting and rotten
they can sleep no longer
charcoal outlines will remain
if summer is ever seen
each breath is an icicle
every icicle an hour glass
when earthworms stay stiff
you wear autumn like armor
before he can chew it off
the ratÕs own snake tail
drags the sandpaper feet
of those who forgot how to hunt
the ship where footsteps
could have stopped
the buzzards who became
the bullÕs eye of her body
a spotlight which pulled in ripples
until tidal waves erased horizons
the sunken-eyed procession
spirals like a black hole
the center of a still ocean
feathers in frenzy
he should have listened
when more than pavlov and poe
rang in thatched tin patchwork
where she fed dogs over him
their echoes filled the capsized craft
and called the emaciated to mass
against sinking hull and soaring ash
with cotton lodged deep
there is a funeral of paper
there is a one-match prayer
shock waves through earrings
the anvil claims another hammer
their bodies continue to wash up
fur and feathers hang in antique
curtains over slack mouths
while buzzard tongues decipher
the sand beaded braille
in limp eyes that turned
to flotsam in throats left unfilled
cripples feed upon cripples
where surf softens the lines
between a cracked hourglass
and piles of scales unclaimed
as the biographies of burglars
before they have the chance
he chews off his own legs
The Photographs
the photographs developed
long after the shutter blinked
burning evidence to film
she found as an observer
an accomplice but no culprit
the pictures taken to ensure
something more than memory
would survive as a reminder
once the drug store presented
the remainders of the past
they are scratches on china
only visible when tilted
so the light hits them wrong
and the public can see that
they are ruined and used
she heard this storm before
past the cellar door reflex
set like dusty mouse traps
in the violet glow of television
it lit his back like arson
leashed by blown speakers
with old dogs locked upstairs
her teeth sank in that sound
and branded him a black eye
he swept under concrete
canyons carved with sweat
for the cells that survived
she found things that could not be
written in your second-hand sparklers
before their soft walls collapsed
in the creased stages of her palms
a harmony of halos flared
their spirals above his head
you should have heard the fire
they set to her hands like applause
he brought them back together
into a fog of forget-me-nots
when she pulled him from
a warm bath of paper cuts
into an ocean of cameras
he could not help but turn
the bombs of his fingertips
lagged like horse hooves
snuffing silence like newborns
after the curtain receded
he forgot he was hungry
when he saw those photos
stuffed into familiar bags
like unfamiliar letters
the rhymes between them
that she never heard
until his fingernails chipped
into thick pieces of shale
breadcrumbs which sank
like fossils beneath him
as the wallpaper of her
painted dress peeled back
it could have been his guernica
if he painted by numbers
collaging awkward pauses
which shed from muted nods
the new american sign language
inside his sleep cycles
the size of movie screens
where cousins suicide like seeds
snow-lined and sand-eyed
these medicated meditations
drawn out like dŽjˆ vu
before aesop gave to grimm
words left his mouth
as tape rewound
his fists around himself
she whispered for him
to crane his neck down her
throat lined with headlines
the stale newsprint
smoldering like perfume
from cherry-tipped sticks
skywriting against the static
in flat sounding circles
fingerprints fathers left
inside their mothers
they cried like lost whales
found within fish bowls
filled with formaldehyde
to breach the soft spots
between memories
his eyes paint her blue
spreading perfect circles
in white space that used to be
her name and its history
pulled out like weeds
all of it frail as make-believe
a thin strip of a hand
flung chivalry to shore
the nights he soon forgets
legends stamped with stilettos
maps abandoned at their x
where she cannot hide
Their Echoes
while his camera lies bedside
a deer stamps jewels out of dirt
with a single silver hoof he heard
when rabbits were bunnies
dad was daddy and not
marble below an inch of snow
when prosthetic percussion
only glimpses his alarm clock
before falling like their conversation
he remembers more and more
things that never quite happened
the street pressed to her face
part of him must have known
it would have been better to watch
before giving them someone
jigsawed from billboards and bus stops
the face of everyone he never met
a martyr who is above all else
not her
every year without her grin
spread slow as arthritis
through each jetty and delta
the veins in his fatherÕs hands
brushed dust from spines like snow
that fell from tree branches
like a chain-gang of runaways
who orphaned one another
but got locked to knuckles
a blind sparrow with a red blindfold
runs thread through his lockjaw
the same red thread over his eyes
lost in something more heroic
the last stands of his sons
who managed to swim through
the arrows in their hollow bones
stretching up from sinkholes
he rubs them out like sleep
insects packed behind his eyes
like the millipede coil in her iris
shudder within oval frames
until he finds himself
five years older in a wheelchair
from the type of car accident
people recall when they hear
words like irony or karma
he has watched their echoes
two outlines of evergreen peaks
spread constellations in widescreen
forming his silhouette
like fatigued cassette tape
he renames them all after
cancelled sitcoms and suicide bombers
dented pennies beside the tracks
caught on needles and branches
and incense ribbons unraveling
was as jagged and hollow
as outlines where pines stop
her kiss became her signature
and crumbled like paint chips
inside a book she did not write
with the creases of her palm
hidden behind his hand
pictures of burnt pictures
that thick-cracked furnace
which shot hot gusts of words
until they lost all meaning
like blowing out the candles
when grandparents could not
muster the breath to wish