Ralph La Rosa
A happy wanderer, Ralph La Rosa has taught English at eight American colleges and universities and one in the Soviet Union. He’s sold screenplays and essays on American literature, but his current passion’s poetry. Adventures in the Soviet Union, coordinating conferences of American and Chinese writers, and having his first poem published are among the most intense and gratifying experiences of his life—so far.
His work has appeared in various journals, including Sewanee Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Lyric, Pivot, and Folly.
< Back to Poetry Contents>
|
Soul Fire
He spoke:
smoke
erupted white
swirled through
silvered beard
wreathed his throat
leapt into black curls
in a cloud
watering brown eyes.
He spoke:
tempted me to
mimic his mouth
when perfect white rings
popped from his face
danced through
my flying pink fingers
and melted into me.
He spoke:
Sing, my son!
Figlio di San Biagio
fires will blaze
in your throat too—
the first words
I saw my father speak.
A Mouthful of Tacks
He was a man with a mouth full of tacks,
blue-black germs of his journeyman’s trade:
Dad daily dipped magnetic hammers into urns
teeming with those sharp dark seeds,
popped bristled blossoms into his mouth,
hammers’ stems springing back to tight lips,
deftly drawing tongue-aligned tacks
as his scratched right hand beat time
on satins or leathers stretched taut
by free forefinger and thumb,
and plied soft sculptures on furniture frames—
creating from cold bones his fleshed italic art.
But I, his first son, proud and defiant,
could only see the defiled hands,
black tack-stained teeth, nicked lips,
blue-black tongue—could only feel
spiked angers spit out at me
when the art in his craft I failed to see—
seeing only the immigrant’s indignity,
not knowing this humble art shaped me,
who now daily labor, trying to articulate
with tired hands, type, and blue-bleeding tongue
just one work as finely finished as
my father made from a mouthful of tacks.
[Originally published in Italian Americana, Volume XVIII, Number 1, Winter 2000]
Dynamic Dance
for V
They’re dazzled by her dance across the floor,
her beat the rhythm of a racing heart.
With restless energy, she makes her start,
glides to the board beside her classroom door.
With chalk in hand, she quick-steps to her score
and parses phrases—nouns and verbs, each part
of speech. She praises both the slow and smart,
then two-steps with lie/lay and either/or.
Voice soaring high and low, her body sways
from side to side. These grace notes widen eyes;
her choreography has earned their praise,
for they have learned, and that’s her prize:
She dances into hearts that she’s romancing
when she embraces words and sets them dancing.
|
