ENDED AS ASHES
I heard the gunshot, felt the bullet enter his brain,
remembered how he raced the humid winds along
Montgomery Street, the soft stutter of his carefully
chosen words, the echo of my mother’s opinions,
his emotionless green eyes, his perfect roman nose
I envied, his sensuous lips, golden hair, smooth skin,
the silence of his judgment, the empty apartment
with photographs of horses, the Dresden figurines
our mother collected, the heart medications on
his end table, the telephone that rarely rang,
the male lover whose murmurs my brother would
never hear again, the collapse of his body, my
ungainly brother who hid his pain, barely occupied
space on this earth, left no footprint of his life,
ended as ashes, mailed to me by a Florida
GRAY UPON GREY
written while listening to Gustav Mahler’s
Symphony #1
a scraggly column of stick figures,
shoes too large, striped uniforms
gray upon grey, marching through
mud and muck
truculent winds beating against backs
bent forward, hope as dismal as the dirt
footprints swerving, breathing stench
the slaughterhouse
waiting, a phantom building, steel mixed
with concrete, windowless, a writhing
coffin to confine these creatures, once
men, less so now
living a permanent toothache, the agony
unaccompanied by ecstasy, relief denied,
cavities prodded and pried open, privacy
throttled by malice
the stars blink, the moon bleeds, a meteorite
flashes, ashes rise to clog nostrils impervious
to odor, while death licks lips and dries tear
ducts, cataracts film eyes
roadside camp fires fail to charm, crouching
figures transform into fierce wolves, fangs
bared, gnashing hungrily at putrid air, a cello
haunts the night,
the darkest of hours shrouding mankind.
Regina Vitolo was born in Brooklyn near the Bond Bread Factory and Ebbets Field. One YA novel published in 1984, mostly poetry published since. She has evolved, even though the world has not.
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