Art: Guilherme Bergamini
SPHERE
The only cats worth anything are the cats that take chances.
-Thelonious Monk
this discord is alien
a dervish whirling and salient
If somebody else did that they’d lock him up
it would be abrupt
you crazy motherfucker yo time is up
->
Charlie paints the stepladder of major scales dark blue
and asks Monk as he is dying
if there is anything he could do
help me with my coat
polish my lens-less glasses
give me chicken liver and mashed potatoes
allow me to adjust my pinkie ring
and sweat on the keyboard
before I close inward and forget my own son
->
he smiles at you while eating an apple in an airport
Nellie counts the money with one eye on him
the baroness makes him giddy
these women are not rivals
one feeds him
one lets him go free
they both love him
the sax solo is a soft shoe sphere
->
pope names
actor names
president names
the shock of fame
of elbowing the high notes
I’m famous?
ain’t that a bitch
->
let’s all take turns looking
at each other before we vanish
into wordless chapters
in a wordless novel
about a countess who stared
at a wordless bird
->
one day
looking across the Hudson
he just
stopped
he was not rescued at the top
just called it quits
didn’t feel like it anymore
handless arms
and the largeness
of forgotten ideas
as valid a reason as any
to bend jazz into absolute silence
where what you don’t play
is louder than what you do
and the piano in the room
was the elephant in the room
About the author:
John L. Stanizzi is author of the full-length collections – Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, and Chants. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, Rust & Moth, Connecticut River Review, Hawk & Handsaw, and many others. Stanizzi has been translated into Italian and appeared in El Ghibli, in the Journal of Italian Translations Bonafinni, and Poetarium Silva. His translator is Angela D’Ambra. He has read and venues all over New England, including the Mystic Arts Café, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Hartford Stage, and many others. He Stanizzi is the coordinator of the Fresh Voices Poetry Competition for Young Poets at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT, and a teaching artist for the national recitation contest, Poetry Out Loud. A former New England Poet of the Year, named by the New England Association of Teachers of English, Stanizzi teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT and he lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.
Art: Untitled by Guilherme Bergamini
In the artist’s words:
Guilherme Bergamini is 39 years old and was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Having graduated in journalism, Bergamini has been working with photography for 22 years. Through this art, Bergamini intends to express his experiences, worldview and anxieties. Passionate about photography since childhood, Guilherme is an enthusiast and curious by new contemporary possibilities that this technique allows. Persistent and critical, the art is photography as a way to political and social criticism. Awarded in national competitions and festivals, he took part in group and solo exhibitions in Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Greece, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Lithuania, Turkey, Venezuela, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Uruguay, United States and India. His work has been published in several Brazilian and foreign press vehicles. He publishes part of his photographic journey on his website (www.guilhermebergamini.com).