Sunlight on the outer
fringes of the clouds:
somewhere,
a table set for summer.

A nun levitated above her bed,
While a fish peered through the window,
Sobbing in the way of fish.
The silence swarmed with ants.
A watch opened its mouth to show its teeth.
A trophy ram’s head looked on,
From the mountains in its glassy, dead eyes.
Then there were mass arrests.
The whole state turned into a prison.
After that got boring, we went to a ball game.
The nun was now levitating above the field.
The game was suspended until further notice.
Then it began to rain baby antelopes,
But all of them were dead,
Limp as the rain itself.

While I was enjoying the trip
My friend was inconsolable
For all the two-timing he’d done
To his beautiful fiance.

At my brother’s lakeside house
The lake was acid-trip frozen.
The crest of every wave remained
Exactly where it crested.  

I looked over at my friend
Who was now sleeping.
I was too far into being to sleep.
I was eternal and living it, in the moment.

One time my father was getting hassled
by some wiseguy from Detroit,
but all dad had to do was make a phone call,
and the young, dumb wiseguy
was chastised for hassling an old friend.
And I still have that secret little phone book
of numbers—those numbers—even though all of them are dead.
Maybe if I have to, I can call them all in hell.

In the beginning, Black Bill dressed like my grandfather,
Like a simple man from the provinces,
Which made the story my family would tell
Over and over all the more engaging,
About how Black Bill bought his mansion
In Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
When the builder dismissed him as a peasant,
He pulled out a large down payment in cash,
Leaving the builder blinking at that fat *** of bills.
That was how they interpreted the American dream.
It didn’t matter how you got there, only that you did.

They went to the same schools,
Lived in the same neighbourhoods,
From the same small towns
In la provincia di Palermo.
Often they were distant relations
And cumpari from the old country.
My mother would say
“Jimmy Q was such a nice man,”
When the Feds said different,
And my grandfather
Would hug someone called Black Bill.
My father treated them respectfully
And they reciprocated.
They respect a respectful person
Because it shows indifference
To their business practices.
And now, with time, I’ve learned,
That guilty by association
You keep your mouth shut,
Wait until all are gone
And write poems about them
Like legends of their time.

When I was a kid,
We drove past
One of those endless Michigan cemeteries,
And my uncle caught me staring,
Maybe with more fear
In my face than necessary.

In his gravelly, wiseguy voice, he said,
“It’s not the dead you need to fear,
It’s the living.”

After that,
I never feared the dead,
And I never trusted the living again,
Especially him.