A Dalliance That Transforms God

Who we are, where we are going and how love, pain and the weight of experience determine why these questions matter to us are some of the themes constellated in the compact, yet uncommonly forthright work of Duane Esposito, tonight’s Barnes & Noble Open Mic featured poet.

A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee (2003 and 2009), Duane will read selections from Declaration of Your Bones, his latest collection (Yuganta Press, 2012), following up on Cadillac Battleship, published by Broken Tribe Press in 2005. Duane released his first poetry collection, Book of Bubba, through Brown Dog Press in 1998.

Along with PoemAlley facilitator, Ralph Nazareth, Duane teaches at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York, where he is an Associate Professor of English. He holds an MA from SUNY Brockport and received an MFA from the University of Arizona. His writing was also selected by Diane Glancy for an Academy of American Poets Award in 1994.

For more information—and to get a feel for his sonorous reading style, click BlogTalkRadio for a 2009 interview with Marcia McNair, or check out the entry covering his previous area appearance at PoemAlley just over a year ago.

The following piece evokes the commonplace with the cosmogonic to pit mortality, regret and other undeniable realities against the still-more-undeniable need to confront, adapt, or move on. 

The Loons
by Duane Esposito

1
The rain falls steadily inside your head.
You will die quite cloistered by autistic music.

The leaves these days
drift toward home.

If you fail to fly, 
they will murder your psyche.

Do you know dalliance
transforms God into a spook? 

2
To close the distance between vast shores, 
I cease being tired of memory.

To no longer chew the bruises of history, 
I speak for the constancy of love.

To no longer wonder 
what it means to be alive,

I refuse to be dragged 
through infantile desires.

Here’s the terror I’ve had to bury: 
you left me with a paralyzed, half-body.

I announce my obsession with rain.
I’m sorry for the stardust that led to creation. 

3
Sometimes, when clouds 
touch water, you’ll soon arrive.

I reach for you-- my gone father-- 
for the blank you left behind.

But loons, once in the whitecaps of pain, 
have left these lakes for winter.

In dream they sleep near my head
& twitch against my neck.

Keep up with Duane online at www.duaneesposito.com.

Hosted by Frank Chambers and PoemAlley's Nick Miele, the Barnes & Noble's Open Mic Poetry program meets the second Monday of each month in the cookbook section on the main floor of the bookstore (located in the Stamford Down Center), beginning at 7:15 p.m.

For more information, contact:

Barnes & Noble

100 Greyrock Place Suite H009

Stamford, CT 06901