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All
You Can Eat Buffet
half n
half, whole
wheat
bread whale
of a
time, split
in two
buttermilk
biscuits,
staring
down my
throat
no
matter, where
I am is
is am I
happy to
eat, what
others
leave behind
in a
napkin, folded
to take
home to
mother
nature, famish
needing
nurture because
a poor
shoe, holes
is not a
way to walk
around
in life, children
Surrender
to Myself
A child
is at my window,
pale and
frail, a mouth straight
and
crossed as a pin-
with
see-through eyes
he
pierces at me with his past,
stitching
it on into my future.
And
there I see his father,
putting
him down in the crib
for the
night, and closing his
bedroom
door then walking away,
a way he
never came back and
opened
the door again.
Now
ill-fated it is for me
to watch
this child standing
outside
the fire, I want to draw
the
blinds and pull down the shades
to the
scales under his eyes,
and as I
do, shutting out this someone
casting
his gaze like black coals
glowing
reddish from an after burn.
A coerce
nudges at me to tell him
that I
know his walk where shallow
steps
fall on hard concrete, the street
I
identified with long ago,
that
could end if went unwary.
And our
faces become transparent
in the
three-dimensional window,
with the
ghost of me oppositely
haunt
with his image, as a seasoned
leaf
cuffing against a green leaf,
I saw
that child crying at night
on his
pillowcase. I saw a moon
that
wouldn’t let go until the break
of dawn.
I wondered if when it
rained
in Baltimore, it rained
in New
York the same time.
I
wondered if tears fell in heaven.
After I
curtained the contained
face
immersed in the window,
I went
up the dark staircase
washed
my hands and face,
and went
to his bedroom, echoing
beside
the unfinished B-9 model
airplane
with detached wings-
where I
peeked through the blinds,
to find
him gone, leaving remnants
in
parallel of no one on the sidewalk.
Paranoia
I have
taken four sleeping pills
and two
shots of Tequila and
half a
bottle of white wine and
still, I
could see her face-
projected
on the big screen
of my
mind,
lights,
camera and no action-
so I
quickly down two ice cold
beers
and get a brain-freeze,
coming
back to feeling fine;
thinking
to myself even in suicide
I
could fuck everything up.
By this
time the crickets are
a point
of view out here
in my
backyard,
how they
line up their
chirps
against the still
night,
and when
I draw myself
in to
them with footsteps
they
shut down,
when I
back away,
they go
return to mingling
under
their forewings,
calling
me an idiot.
Anthony Liccione
is from Upstate New York and has been writing poetry for over ten years.
He has recently won the 2006 LizaBeth
Poetry Award and Unscrambled Eggs Poetry Contest, and was nominated "Best Tragic Poem"
and "Best Poem of the Year 2005"
(Muses Review). He released a chapbook Parched and Colorless with The Moon Publishing,
and a full-volume book of poems Back Words and Forward.
The American Author’s Association has given, Back Words and Forward, its highest rating--5 stars and Silver
Medal Award for Poetry for 2005.
Email: Anthony Liccione
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