Three Poems by Mark Marony: Beccafico, Cirque Calder De L'Univers, Paper Speaks

Three Poems
by Mark Marony

Beccafico

They say that
the Romans
fatted geese
and buntings
on figs
before glutting
their guilty
appetites.
Not a bad last meal,
this fruit
descended from Jannah.

At the market, swollen
purple bulbs of
sweet velvet
and syrup
line up, six by six,
in balsa wood crate-lets,
like March’s mail-order chicks,
fresh to this world,
waiting to be picked up
at the post office.
What a soft protest
they make
in the back room, under
the artificial light.

In broad day light,
in view of my neighbors
and my God -
no embroidered cloth
to cover my head -
I milk the full
bursting fruit
between my
tongue and teeth
until the flesh ruptures
like the yolk of an egg,
heady with
honey and eau de vie.
Mitterand should have been
so guiltless.

Cirque Calder De L'Univers

Somewhere Alexander Calder
unpacks his suitcases of smallish acrobats,
articulated chariots, and miles of life-giving
strings and wires. This is the way the universe
works, of course: a yank of a cord here, a twist
of a coil there, and movement is born, or
dies. And the audience applauds.

Paper Speaks

Your words make me
heavy. The way you
scatter them upon
my cherished emptiness
leaves me empty. First,
you make me a proxy -
for her or him or
them - and then
you make me an effigy,
word-ripened for
the flame.

Mark Marony is a high school teacher and freelance writer whose work has appeared in Fiddlehead Loop, Parent Express, Compass Rose, and Carved in Granite II: An Anthology of New Hampshire Writers, among others. He lives with his artist-wife, Jessica, and their four children in the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire.

Copyright 2012 Mark Marony. © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.