This Is A Saucy Poem
If you declare some sequence of
words a poem, is it a poem?
Is the act, the declaration, sufficient? An artist-former-lover
of mine who will no longer have anything to do with me,
although that’s not pertinent, once said, when we were still sleeping
side-by-side, anything an artist puts on a wall is art.
By the very fact of doing so. Is that right? Is that what you said?
(But I can’t ask you because — as mafia dons say — I am
‘dead to you now.’) So, the would-be poet flings strings of word upon the
white wall and sees what sticks. Like the Italian cook, seeing if a strand of vermicelli sticks,
meaning the pasta is sticky enough to be done. Although in my certified Italian
household growing up, where my Father began making the spaghetti sauce on Friday
afternoon, with meat bones bought at the butcher, the meaty bones of some cow
bubbling away in his dark red stew of tomatoes,
tomato paste, garlic, onion, salt, pepper, virgin olive oil,
meatballs rolled by hand
slow-cooking until the red sauce was ready for Sunday dinner, I don’t ever recall
him flinging a noodle against the wall. And he was born on a steep hillside in
Calabria. So, that was not the nature of
his art.
I have wondered all my life: Is this a poem? But I guess, it’s a lot
like that sauce. You stick your finger, quick-in, quick-out — it’s hot! –
and taste. If it’s good, it’s good, And if it’s not quite done
or needs something, you add
a little salt. Or whatever your Italian bones suggest,
maybe it just needs more
time.
July 25, 2012
Words