Poems by William Allegrezza
Helpless I watch you slide under the sailboat’s lifelines into the dark water and jump to action pulling ropes to turn us around, but already I know that no matter how fast I am, you will be swept away. I switch to search mode the moment you are gone.
Joy The moments of joy line up next to the deep hurts to rearrange them. The child being born, the mountain peak, the first laugh, first kiss, the flowers or fruit growing, the pine forests of youth, the other’s smell, the fast nights, good friends, sweaty weariness. They line up and speak through to thankfulness, to belief, to keep us going through what we believe to be our deep problems.
Puzzled I am often on the side confused by how others so easily slide in and out of conversations. Their agility to be comfortable in so many situations seems almost magical. Even when I tell myself to speak, I hear words I do not mean and immediately want to take them back in their awkward and untrue state, but I don’t know how to walk back through difficult conversations gracefully and am once again puzzled. I listen to people’s gimmicks and advice about repeating the conversation or looking for commonalities and then begin talking about linguistic variation across geography or about the shifting waypoints of cultures and loose all but a small crowd.
Grief I am watching you die slowly, your memory slips each time we talk, though you barely seem to notice that the you that was is gone. I make plans and continue, but around me hangs the heaviness of knowing you are still there but not, of knowing that when a parent leaves, something changes, of knowing that soon you won’t remember anything but will still be until your body finally stops.
Sorrow When I was a boy, I heard old men playing their sorrow songs and learned that in a moment, the world can change in breaking voices with ancient rhythms, so when the deaths, the sorrows began for me, they came with a beat pulled through gravity, rough, marked with a rhythm already partially known, with other voices screaming inside mine a beat that I slapped out with feet on pavement, with hands at work, with conversation now turned stranger. When I left home, I thought to leave my past behind, but in being broken, I found the song was already playing.
About the Poet:
William Allegrezza edits the press Moria Books, Moss Trill, and teaches at Indiana University Northwest. He has published many poetry books, poetry reviews, articles, translations, short stories, and poems. He founded and curated series A, a reading series in Chicago, from 2006-2010. More information about him can be found at https://www.allegrezza.info.
