Ben Nardolilli

I am a twenty five year old writer currently living in Arlington,
Virginia. My work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, One Ghana
One Voice, Caper Literary Journal, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, Super
Arrow, Grey Sparrow Journal, Pear Noir, Rabbit Catastrophe Review, and
Yes Poetry. Recently, a chapbook of mine Common Symptoms of an
Enduring Chill Explained, has been published by Folded Word Press. I
maintain a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.
        




Penny Sundown

Repetition and rhyme
Trapped by the canal,
In the mournful solitude,
Drunkenness already diminishing,
Or gone, outer face of the night
Turning yellow, everything
That is speaking is flying,
The dead explore the clothed.

Heaven wheels itself
Through the crowd,
As a moving skyline of smiles
Speaks with bat wing mouths,
Everything experiments in color
But you remain dark and clear,
The walking cave, the canvas.

Several pages long,
The green grass subjects
Surround the emaciated lagoons
While it lacks poetry,
Somewhere in the celestial grime,
Flesh of lives sings
With voices muffled by plywood.

In the rosy punctured dawn,
You wake again, drunkenness,
Trapped in by the canal,
The river is on fire,
With clay steps you follow
Porcelain feet, until
Sacred blue washes you away,
Your ear swirls, your eye pants,
And you’ve gotten straw for free.



Livestock Thoughts

Behind these bars, everything I have
Is absolutely mine, no hand
Comes in to disturb it,
I do not own myself, but
That is the truth of anything that lives,
The butcher thinks his body,
His mind are not property of the universe,
But his own, obeying
The laws of his imagination,
Yet his life rests in my dying,
And my being sold, without me
He would have no curtains,
No roof above his head,
I would not mind my sacrifice so much,
If only him and his kind could appreciate it.




After That

No lie going on before me,
These dancers are true,
Their eyes do not leave
The other partner’s body,
Not for the beams and fog,
Not for me in the corner
No matter how much
I drink in the corner,
Or out in the spotlight,
Everything white on me
Glowing under the black light.




The Rest of the Kitchen

In her tulip red dress,
She glides over the floor,
A dancer on the hardwood,
He bare feet point
And carry her on tiptoe.

She is staging nothing
For my entertainment's sake,
Her movements work
To keep the walls asleep
While she grabs the drawer.

If she is too loud with waves,
The house will rise up
With anger and quickly
All the wood attached to wheels
Will come out at her.

Bottles will come crashing,
Knives will hit the ground,
Glasses empty and just cleaned
Will be carelessly tossed
And the drawers will not shut.

Her sudden grace keeps us
Safe and the floor clean,
I admire the way she draws out
Another spoonful of vinegar,
And crouches for my condiments.





Prayer to Winter Pants

Pants, we got there ashamed,
Pants, keep holding us,
Through the howl and blizzard,
Through the wind and the mounds
Of lazy snow unmoved,
Pants, keep dry, keep us dry,
Do not let the intersection sea
Freeze us up or splash us down.