Gay Giordano
Poems
Fanfare in The Night Waves
An extravagant lack of foresight
That night is dark and incalculable
The amateur dramatics of rubbery creatures
Living in cracks in the earth, bowls of water
Are in rehearsal for an eternal run
Untouched by our attendance
Our understanding is strictly metaphorical:
Whales, the rightful heirs of pageantry
dangle underwater like drenched raincoats
Jellyfish move with some difficulty
in tightened Broadway corsets
And the cries of dolphin are heard as creaking leather
when an old man rises from his armchair
Above in the gallery, a sailboat rests like an endive in the water
the sound of a gown swishing around a corner
Day arrives with our normal vocabulary
Our beaks open to the sun, tulips
Lipstick red and restless
While a walrus’s Barbershop Quartet face
Bellows in drunken applause on the shore
Not depending on us for anything at all
Not even a curtain call
Or an assessment of language
The Dungeon
An old sepia photograph rescued
from the godless forces of color
a dungeon of family heritage
a moment of recognition
It is clear they are passing apologies
Through the communal cocoon:
I’m sorry, it’s clear my dog bites…
My jaws click when I smile
Behind-the-fan gossips pucker their eyebrows
above their buttoned gloves:
She has eyes like the teats of an overturned cow
He was a cellist destroyed by injustice and gambling
The part in her hair looks like the entrance to a circus tent
His neck is so short his head looks positively screwed in…
They fluff out their elegant skirts
Tigers would shed their stripes in favor of such dots
The men do one or two things
Before conquering their vest buttons
And the glass plate trembles in its box
Resigned to the inevitable record of history
A grimace mistaken for a smile
in the hundredth of a second it took to form
I Take My Contours from History
I felt the book Aristotle threw at my head
This pain belongs to you. Here it is, a crushed metal ball
We are swells born in featureless brine
Patron saints of atrophy
Until we reach out a paw to the shore
A statue is smooth until it breaks its nose
You are the engineer of this act
Seeker of singularity, shine, sharp contours
Defending the dirty little bag that holds your life savings
But here happens what always happens
You end up nestled in the footnotes
A conjugated system of the human face
Lion-tamed by sheer numbers
And therein lies our simple truth
We end up ghosts in someone else’s mouth
A tragedy of art, a missed opportunity
Gay Giordano
Gay Giordano was raised in New York City and the Bahamas. She has a BA in Creative Writing from Carnegie Mellon University and an MA in Philosophy from The New School for Social Research. Her collection of poetry, “Waking From So Rich A Nightmare,” was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2015. Poetry and fiction have appeared in several publications, including MASS Poetry, Mudfish, The South Carolina Review, The Oakland Review, Ghost Ocean Magazine, r.kv.r.y, ALittlePoetry.com, The Lullwater Review and others. She writes professionally about architecture and design and is the author of Illusion in Design: Trends in Architecture and Interiors (Rizzoli 2022) and New York Living: Re-Inventing Home (Rizzoli 2017). Writing residencies and awards include: The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Mt. San Angelo, Virginia; The Noepe Center, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts; The Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, Temecula, California; The Banff Center for the Creative Arts/The Leighton Artists’ Colony, Banff, Canada; Academy of American Poets Award, “Best New College Poet”, awarded by Donald Hall; and the Bennington College Writers-in-Residence program.
Website: https://www.
Instagram: @idreamedisaw
