POEMS

The Archivist

My birthright, that schoolboy’s pebbled leather satchel

carted from Calabria’s parched paradise,

companion to the weighty desktop encyclopedia—

two volumes flaunting the Italian you courted

with a chevalier’s ink, pages doubly bound

by a cavaliere’s lust for wisdom and verse,

your pen biding beauty’s brio. 

Did that pliant vault soften the rough Atlantic

by harboring sea and earth, a twirl of hair,

your mother’s picture, a Mediterranean shell 

or did it lay destitute—an expectant void

fertile only with the future—to shelter, say

the antics and annals of no-account players,

unschooled scholars foiling each day’s

scatter in a swirl of dreamless sleep?

You, an autodidact scribe, logging lofty

and nitty-gritty rhythms, an archivist piecing lives,

gathering pages, images, musings against forgetting 

ourselves, fleeting as ephemera fading,

the blank life threatening… 

Your voice set against erasure like a piazza

composing public memory—unthinkable to overcome

without a word, poverty’s rubble, a tongue-tied exile,

the rupture of family and familiars–so before

the time-card’s whistle, rise from ruins with the light,

veto silence by marking unremarked characters.

With no home, no wife and kids, no money

you pulled into Toronto, gravitated to a communized

Victorian in Little Italy, five fellow loners your roommates,

at night again, you roused a pen flush with oceanic currents,

spewed satirical rhyme echoing migrant woes—

the ugly looks and bum rap brutality hostile

Hogtown Anglos heaped on dirty, hot-blooded wops,

or pick-pocket priests preaching dollars over prayer

as proper love of God, tagging you the devil’s twin

for acerbic songs limned in cobalt lines wailing

in that satchel sanctuary—peasant wit, a grave chronicler

waxing to populist poet—witness to the overlooked moment. 

Back home you glossed an imaginary figure 

fragmented in air mail letters spilling poignant

mea culpas for meagre funds dispatched,

and mother weeping blue tears in epistles,

wringing work-hardened hands lest love be disfigured

in a vast sky where time’s fault cracks bonds  

so hunger and thirst no longer remember vows

that bind night to day summing to half a decade 

to reunion at Union Station…

all the while recording, animating space with glaring

photographs depicting a black and white city of men

missing women: clippings from giornali and newspapers,

missives from intellectual cronies to Il Giornale di Toronto

homesick magazines pushing glamour-puss celebs,

cryptic columns from The Globe and Telegram,

ideological posturing, political double-talk and mirth:

an elect obvious and oblique, revenants suspended

in that immigrant treasury—the past

passed on—becoming…

You kissed a toddler goodbye, we touched again

as strangers. Shaped by your passions and persona

I contoured into a mirror, prizing books, stage and poets. 

Afloat in the sixties, my rebel-girl favoured brandy 

and smokes chasing a freedom that eluded you;

only 25, raging tears on that goodnight a burst aorta

blitzed your heart, I refuged in the bathroom,

sipped whiskey, toasted Dylan Thomas. 

Your paper remains abide as my inheritance, a death

transcending re-collection crafting a man unreadable

beyond the workaday barbershop and prosaic papa, 

his ars vitae time-capsuled in crumbling skin.

For decades I cart, guard, closet that satchel, avoid

trespassing upon a stashed away bio. 

Now, at an age when saving promises

no end other than itself, over a private telling,

I crave an opening—the found moment

where ephemera evolves as history.

To rouse a life bigger than a daughter’s lens

or genealogical myth, my dig flounders as I unravel

yellowed years, haloed ink blurred by neglect.

I strain to decode Italianate script and shifting form

to enter a writ become my second tongue

and revel in your philosophic drift.

Musing on wounded jottings and smart-ass aphorisms,

wistful for your knowing smile and soulful spunk—

eloquent clocks re-verse to banquet halls; again I witness

you speechifying marrying rhetoric and lyric at festive nuptials

or brains and book-learning to endorse a politico paesano

vying for votes reaching to unlock the “ethnic” paddock.

Then on to clashing missives when I blew Toronto

to get back-to-the-land (the very life you’d evacuated)

and set my hippy soul free in nota bene New Brunswick,

verbal fisticuffs we threw across generations—muscular,

laced with bloody love, so as I write my heart

sounds, longing—to lean into your warmth. 

To woo the chief archivist at the Fisher Rare Book Library, 

like a tutored orator and done-good poet,

I piece your story between cerulean covers. 

A go-between shuttling voices, faces, crossings

and landings—with unalloyed hope, I unscroll

your artful artifact, the bittersweet, sweat-soaked diary

of two interconnected, disconnected countries.

Yes

paper binds beginning to end

sealed by final words penned on that farewell morn,

the salutation—your arabesque signature

a lettered last kiss, archived, winging off the page

into illuminated finding.

“The Archivist” won 1st prize in The Venera Poetry Contest. “The Archivist” is the story of an immigrant to Canada from Calabria. The initial quality the reader will notice is the firm grasp the author has on free-verse prosody (so rare these days!); this is a well-constructed poem. The tale it tells is a common one, and it reminds Canadian readers that Canada is much more than a country of people whose roots go back to either the British Isles or France. It deals with the struggles immigrants face: poverty, learning a new language, separation from family, etc. And it deals with the attempt to retain something of the “old country” in the new one. Finally, the actual immigrants experience a separation from their children and grandchildren in that their descendants are “full” Canadians while the immigrants are “hyphenated” Canadians, caught, as it were, between two countries. (And this works the other way, too — children born and raised in Canada often have trouble relating to their foreign-born parents.) Importantly, readers are reminded of the vital role the tales of these new Canadians play in making Canada what it is — a nation of many different, and valid, stories. All this and more is covered in this remarkable poem — James Deahl   

HOME - SICK

A story out of a bat cave, 

set in invisible ink afflicts the headlines 

a cimmerian microbe blights garden and street 

flings spring into lockdown—

given the opacity of tomorrow, of airports in a chokehold, 

our wings collapse—stranded

dragging sagging hearts, we head indoors.  

Flashing a punk-spiked crown, this viral marauder 

wields exponential power, dictates bulletins,  

updates the death count, outlaws touch 

as it proliferates via lips and hands.

Statisticians and medics crunch numbers, ride

vectors and peaks, map deadly intersections

where each neighbour or passerby veils the odds. 

Where each citizen disfigures the social contract, 

two metres mandate mortal isolates; 

with wary looks, we damn each other, 

shun hugs, shed the pat on the back. 

Under a sky gasping for oxygen, corpses pile up, 

eyeing hazmat-suited nurses mirroring hellish 

sisters-of-mercy—we settle for air kisses. 

Borders toughen and turn icy, bristle with searchlights,

each beam pins stranger to strangling invader. 

At breakneck speed the mace-like butcher

lacerates the poor, penetrates slaughterhouses 

and prison cells, slashes elders damned 

to infernal retirement havens where bankers

hurl barbed stars at the homesick perdu.   

And aren’t we all legislated homebodies now— homesick for air? 

Sizing up our clannish cages, we pace 

between grandma’s handwritten recipes and legible screens, 

blow out virtual birthday candles and make a wish 

for this to end. Grounded in domesticity, long days 

echo the tempo of sourdough and seedlings.

Exiled from this long-suffering earth, we circle 

in bubbles, turn inward and unclock, 

kid around and lose at Payday— 

with work and play bound in yellow caution-tape, 

life’s bustling whirl screeches to a dead stop—

deserted streets throw up the homeless,

benched, with no roof to shelter-in-place; each day 

bares the raw-boned body of caregivers and migrant workers, 

bilked as they scrub toilets and fill the fridge,  

a wing and a prayer, their only PPE. 

Two metres is not the social distance separating us, 

it’s the rift between homeless and housed, 

the gulf between essential and non-essential,

the chasm between have and have-not,

exposed and cleft deeper by an equalizing virus 

unmasking the fault plaguing us.  

PLANTING LIGHT

“Planting Light” was written in October 2019, to support the auto workers at the Oshawa General Motors plant. It is published in the Spring 2020 issue of Our Times (Canada's Independent Labour Magazine).

My lungs ache, my chest tightens

when I remember the skylark’s grounded wings, 

the mangled contract;

how fossil fuel tycoons, every day

get away with murder,

while snug, in private planes, smug GM execs

jet through workday rainbows,

incinerating four generations of auto workers;

all the while poormouthing, emitting do-gooder bunk 

as secretly, they idle the clock.

Mum about concessions and two-tiered wages, 

assembly lines rear ended as they pile up dinero;

tight-lipped about billions in lapsed loans

or in-cahoots politicians–forgive 

and forget about GM on the dole

pocketing bailouts as backhanded bounty

so corporate bums ride on the taxpayer’s dime

then crash the books ‘til numbers combust 

to a scorched earth policy.

And Mary Barra, cushy 

in the company’s stretch-limo hearse,

driving a geopolitical dirge for Oshawa, 

hitching our unallocated plant to a no-rules playbook, 

steering daily bread south to another

maquiladora spewing cars and trucks

to line GM’s pockets with beggared Mexican workers.

And far from crude-slicked beaches, far 

from gulls glazed in black gold, 

oily Molochs brew barrels of ecocide,

blind to babes bartered to Exon and the Koch Brothers, 

deaf to teens exhausted by the internal combustion engine,

choking on tomorrow going up in smoke.

Brave and unruly—the young who eye

the maple leaf rusting against melting polar ice,

who bear witness to the ravaged grandeur 

of Atlantic right whales sacrificed 

to drunken cruise ships and dollar-store freight carriers, 

who flag climate refugees pitched

by ocean waves fisting the sky. 

Too green are they to weather hope flattened 

by hurricanes, cutting class each Friday 

to tug the state’s ear closer to truth; 

aggrieved and grieving they stare down the UN’s fake nod, 

and bigwigs who back away from a future snuffed 

by the ever-thin promise of permanent jobs flowing 

from trickle-down economics through pipelines, 

into the shareholders’ insatiable maw. 

Cavalier guardians hold hostage their planet

rub out the moon, torch the stars—

it’s no surprise that Oshawa darkens

when a kingpin daddy fuses dream to nightmare 

and torpedoes the kid next door. 

But if parents love progeny, 

they must keep house—be one with Earth; 

One’s a number that grows on itself  

person by person, summons unity—

sums pushback and power, nurturing union,

like vanguard Greta daring One global choir, 

tuning street and jungle to emerald anthem,

to human harmony, mantled Amazon air;

in concert we’re Nature’s all indigenous union 

seeding a clearing through carbonized sky.  

And One shouts NO to an orderly wind-down

Oshawa seizes the front seat, keeps on 

the lights; beacons for citizens, workers hail 

E-vehicles, laser bulldozer blight. 

A fresh plant electrifies GM’s shuttered heart, 

again, dawns the people’s diamond-hard light. 

VENTURE: WELLS, B.C.

“Venture: Wells, B.C.” poem will be published in The Trinity Review, Issue TR132.

The blackest crow rends morning dew,

raucous inkwells surge, slur words;

how is it robins shit on the tiger lily’s redhead roar,

that the teacher’s thunderclap dumbfounds innocents?  

Russet hawkweed stifles our lilies—wither 

and rust—the house, dog-hungry;

all night, Goldcorp lays with the stone-broke river, 

each yes man pans a harlequin whore, soft-shoes 

over tailings, trips’n splits his lip, 

open pit and cyanide heap—already the mourning dove.

18 karat dust haloes the bride, ‘till death do us part;

stark, the silver birch against sentinel conifers. 

When poets buzz in people’s ears they’re dinged 

and flattened—characters scoring a fresh page. 

SOLAR FLORALS COLLECTION

Solar Florals

“In this four-part elegy, the sun shadows life with death; the sunflower faces light but is backed by shade; the Apollonian and leonine hero - a working-class Lycidas - is crashing from drug addiction … [to] the final section of this miniature, …. ‘let those who can memorize light / eclipse their demons,’ hit hard the heart … Giovanna Riccio is a poet of divine - I mean indomitable - gifts. Each unconventional - i.e., insolently brilliant - line summers, in ‘florid burst - August / spiking the air’.” - George Elliott Clarke, 2019. (Solar Florals have been published in Exile Quaterly, 42.3, p.98.)

 Heliotropism

That word sunflower stiffs the lithe go-getter—

sprightly beam-catcher

more limber the camber of girasoleor tournesol

troping improbable brilliance. 

A novice bloom mimes sun,

when night drops, it pivots east, 

lies low until Apollo cycles up

to recharge instinct, boost circadian spunk. 

The sunflower senses the cloud’s coverup 

limns elusive winds, never snuffs life’s spark. 

All grown up, the seasonedhelianthus  

comes to a stand still, a last stand; 

the summer sage, far-seeing,

tilts eastward for good—back 

shrouded by shade—facing

dusky fire whorling to seed. 

Anti-helios

My rebel sunflower roused

a fey bad-boy toting loud bouquets,

yellow fields romancing canvas, tall photographs,

our shields against stygian spooks

or sleep broken by daddy’s drink-primed rage, 

no angel’s skirt rustling refuge either,

only threadbare motherlove drubbed to flight 

cracked plaster and babes tip-toeing on eggshells,  

you rapping adoleful couplet

Don’t push me’ cause I’m close to the edge

an anthem, half smile, half- epitaph   

Sometimes I wonder, how I keep from going under….

from pitching into wintry soil

where no happy-flower could root, 

layers of blushing shirts you piled on, a poor fix 

for below-zero shivers, smug classmates a-snicker, 

the teacher’s cold feet jammed in her craven mouth.  

In your godforsaken house, the fridge chilled

one crystalline bottle of Smirnoff leaving you,

as senior sibling, to lift Spam, soda crackers 

and canned soup for ravenous kids,  

to bust a lamp on your father’s putrid noggin 

lurid, over your sister—shattered, 

you gathered light shards and at 14, split

for a gamin’s dawn, a castaway crashing 

in an underlit furnace room; castoff blankets 

and solo boy crunching lifesavers in the two-dog night.

By instinct you and Henry found each other,  

twohellions, leonine, on the scrapheap 

chalking fighting words in alleyways, 

slinging booze to quell mean-cop fists, 

turning birthdays to drink, drugs and dealing, 

or three-squares in jail where you learned to do laundry

and to bleach the night with smack that left bruises 

trailing up your arm and wasted you 

to a hungry slip needling ghosts. 

Then Henry stone-cold on the bed 

from too much memory and dirty junk, 

you, at the window afraid to shoot up, 

reaching through panes, petrified veins 

and dead wood, eyeballing sun detoxing fog. 

Helios Crashing  

So, nothing left but to doff      

the lab coat’s bluff, cut surgical babble  

snaking through drip tubes, (nothing here we can’t reverse)

The crescent moon stabs my breast

grief’s bone-sliver blow; wheels hurling 

to no-exit—huis clos,

no emergency exit--

driving a one-way good bye 

down an asphalt mourning ribbon—nothing

but death is irreparable.  

If only the corridor were a two-way street, 

but there’s no way back, no call to dodge 

darkness; with the hospital room off life-support, 

dawn streams in, purling light

--your body gone lucid,

no more air hunger or thirst for cause,

only you spiriting sun,a halcyon amen

conjuring our beloved willow tree 

and you forever handsome, 

bookish on the beat-up bench

bathed in April rays;

And I your lover;

your name rising, mint on my lips

and warm, in my empty hand, our first dance, 

when we broke ground 

straining for sky. 

Alone, I draped you in emerald silk, planted   

one lone sunflower breaking over your heart. 

Helianthus Kiss 

Five years clean you blew in, an end, 

a beginning glossing New Year’s Eve 

jivers, DJs, you and me itching for alchemy

looking to blaze blues into gold.  

Me older, you doing the mature student thing,

we gamboled an incendiary twosome—swayed 

and sashayed, dazing bad-luck and bad lovers;

hot on midnight’s heels, we twirled a volte face

two-stepped to dawn, to sleep afresh, rise anew. 

All winter, I fed you tomato-laced penne, 

sharp parmigiano, pears, sparkling water,

stoked logs on the fire, rearranged bygones 

to a high-ceiling refuge for Shangri-la.    

But let those who can memorize light,

eclipse their demons; yours lay low like hitmen 

chafing beneath skin and though you rallied 

after each smashing hit, veered into dog-eared books,

or twisted Buddha-like in lotus, each relapse 

scored a black sheep fading to a done deal, 

dead kidneys, dialysis, blood circling--

I fire up the computer’s sleeping screen

--sunflower halo over your name;

railing against February’s feeble sky,

I trek Bloor Street florist shops,

unearth a crush of sun-fisted helianthus

and stud the living room with love’s 

petulant corona—each insolent torch, 

each florid burst—August

spiking the air.