I would have told you
in my father’s house there are many
mansions. I remember the passion
of adolescence, bodies
of water, rhythmic slapping
during rain, before/after, over
hill and dale and lake,
panting rush of skin.
Let me start again. I ran
that sentence into the ground so
to speak. Speak loudly,
and never be afraid
to go out on a limb—
my mother’s words, my father’s—
Man’s sins, there are many, many …
a paper flower dropped in a cup of water
succored with yellow petals
glistened with spit.
Halfway through the matinee, I
wake up watching a film to find myself
in the lead role. My eyes adjust from dark
to day, outside in the dim light on the street
where everyone is saying the same thing
differently. Between folds of paper and body sweat
and smoke from rubber or cigarettes, billboards
with all the ads defaced, hurried footsteps,
the glaze of morning, it occurs to me:
The whole world is a vast film set
in which props are continually shifting,
four extras reprising the roles of twenty-four characters
and people you’ve never seen before
playing your most beloved ones. Things no longer
run on lithium, only time. The roving camera
is a mirror where the lens’s gaze belongs
to the audience, or else a recurring memory,
propped on stilts and a rotating series of images
displayed from an old Bell & Howell Cassette Projector
in which stutters may result in earthquakes. Narration dissolves
into a guided tour with no boundaries and hardly any pauses
for pictures or carefully planned detours, feelings
and ideas burst to the foreground with all the fanfare
of a very impressive PowerPoint presentation:
A word, a laugh, a look, some slight distress,
a passing thought or fear forgotten since childhood
like the ghosts that endure in homes, the dust
clinging to furniture throughout generations,
the memories that live on as ghosts,
the people and places you used to know, whispers or misheard
words, winding staircases that spiral
into an M.C. Escher painting, seemingly contained
but rather limitless. No end or absence
of surveillance in which someone, somewhere
is changing the frames, retaining an illusion
of motion for a single, vertiginous moment.
Still Life
Silence to say
I lost you repeating
On airless days turned
Inward on a track
Background of reflections
In the fountain of a park
Flower petals
Wooden benches
Breeze stirring slightly
Occupied parking space
Vacated lots, faces lost in passing—
We pass every day
Smile politely sometimes
Say a few words something
Casual, neutral, nice
As a swimming pool in June
Ice cream at midnight
Coffee in the cold
Picture in a magazine
Chris Campanioni seeks to blur boundaries. He has worked as a journalist, model, and actor, and he currently teaches literature and creative writing at the City University of New York. He was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize at Lincoln Center in 2013, and his novel, Going Down, was selected as Best Debut Novel for the 2014 International Latino Book Awards. Find him in space here: www.chriscampanioni.com
–Art by Mario Mencacci
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