Featured Poet: March 2013 Vol. 5 # 6

admin — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 01:05:43 +0000

Nick Ripatrazone

Nick Ripatrazone is the author of four books: Oblations (prose poems, Gold Wake Press), This Is Not About Birds (poems, Gold Wake Press), The Fine Delight: Postconciliar Catholic Literature (literary criticism, Cascade Books) and This Darksome Burn (novella, firthFORTH Books). His criticism appears regularly at Shenandoah, Pleiades, Iowa Review, Colorado Review and HTMLGIANT. His writing has received honors from Esquire, The Kenyon Review, and ESPN: The Magazine, and has been featured at Verse Daily.

This is how you remove a hook

from a trout: smooth your hand down

like petting the fish, and then squeeze

so the mouth opens, like a door.

Not that you would squeeze a door,

Rachel, I am talking about the action

in different ways, since I know

you do not always like these trips

(early morning, the rubber

of waders against thighs,

claustrophobia in the current)

and I want you to know

I appreciate your participation,

but, really, that trout will die

unless you learn to move

with a mixture of speed and care.

Catch is less important than release.

Sisters of Mercy

Beneath a 1986 Chicago Bears

sweatshirt, thermals, and bleached

Polo dress shirts, I found

a folded nun’s habit.

I lifted the habit and the fabric

settled down, brown and full.

The white coif was a bit wrinkled.

I searched the box for a rosary

but only found costume necklaces.

A woman stood behind a table,

bills stuffed into a fanny pack.

Could this be? Might she

have gone from convent to cul-de-sac,

traded morning prayers and early supper

for Pilates and PTA? I wanted

to ask, but someone tried to barter

the price of a butter plate. The owner

said absolutely not: all prices firm.

Nothing left to interpretation.

This Is Not About Birds

We followed molted feathers toward the corner of the barn

where a swallow’s coffee-colored, cup-shaped nest sat

in the rafters & small, sloped heads of nestlings rose & fell.

Outside they fluttered while scuttling along the shingles &

then swooped overhead; forked, cream-spotted tails shuttering

through wind. Yesterday a lone bird stooped over the wobbling

blades before rolling away, & we followed the swoop

until it rested on the roof & promised that one day it would be

on our table, center gutted, a prize for us to eat.

So we stuffed into the pickup, NRA stickers worn to beige, &

fired wayward shots to rouse the swallows from their nest &

we spun through the field, tires toughing it out but we shook

while keeping our rifles out the window. Waiting. None of us

had ever shot anything before (anything that moved/breathed/lived)

but it was as good a time as any.

Was there ever a time that was not as good as any other times?

Was this decided by a certain group of people?

Was there a list of times that were good, & times that were not?

Was this the result of a comparison or a singular observation?

This poem should (must) end with a death. So here it is:

I, or someone with me, as we have formed a collective, raised

a rifle, waited for the swallow to spread its wings, be full-formed.

Then breathed. Then shot, a single fire, & so accurate

that the swallow dropped, wings collapsing onto the hollow

belly. Such a thing to steal flight from something. Such a

shame.

An American Werewolf in London

Six hours of early Depeche Mode in Ms. Gabriel’s Saab

was worth it to see my brother play college football.

No one knew he was dating my geometry teacher.

My parents were de-flooding our basement

so I hitched a ride and listened to her claim

that Wade was more mature than most men,

let alone other college sophomores. She brought two cases

of water bottles and pointed at each Whole Foods

we passed. I explained the rules of football

and she told me that academics were more important.

I liked bottle rockets, Def Leppard, and two-point

conversions, and watched Wade barrel through

the line while people asked if I was his son.

Afterward the teacher wanted to go out, so Wade

told me to watch a horror movie and said to close

my eyes during the bad parts. The teacher

said she trusted me to do the right thing.

Santo Domingo

Four on the pickup bed, red

shirts flushed from wind, hands

in back pockets & we follow

them past the boys shooting

at the dark backboard, ball

not bouncing but slogging.

We park at the market where

cattle hang upside down, gutted

& draining into milk cartons.

We step over the heads of bulls

& flies tickle our calves. Velocidad

maxima: men in sandals & ripped

jeans hold hands, leaning against

the pocked walls, Styrofoam cups

pitted in the holes. Carlos

walks us past them & shakes

one’s hand, skin lingering on skin,

& I kick aside bottles of Presidente

while the brothers of his lover sit

behind a sign with a white woman.

Where is he, Carlos asks, hand

on the rock (Esteban is an officer

& sets brush control fires

on the roadside–in the only photo

Carlos has ever shown of him, he

is pissing in the fire). The brothers

raise their shoulders & say,

in words I only half-understand,

what’s gone today is gone forever.

» Nick Ripatrazone

Featured Poet: March 2013 Vol. 5 # 6