BY ANTHONY PICCIONE, BOA EDfTIONS, LTD., BROCKPORT, NEW YORK; 1986.

     I like this small book of short poems, full of anger, and alcohol and love. There is a photograph of the author on the back
cover. He looks like Grizzly Adams...or Tiresias. Speak for yourself, Tiresiasl
 

WITH MY COUSIN MITCH, NIGHT OF THE QUARTER MOON, I PLACE A TURD IN THE SOAPDISH AND GO IN TO SHOW THE GROWNUPS

It is riverbed-yellow, flecked with mica,
a secret so vast and simple, it is the turnback
of a million years that fills us with wonder,

It fits, precisely, the soapdish's curve.
How can this be? We walk in slowly, unfold
this oracle. My mother loves the joke, the holiness

perhaps, while his lifts a thin switch of ash
the grim lines of her face already twitching.
There is something we don’t understand here,

it was my idea, my lost way that got us to this place.
And how can a pinch of clay scatter so many so far?
 
 

FIRST COMMUNION

If it is night here I will wake in Jerusalem shivering,
Far below, an ant: pushes a dungball
up the cobble hill to my feet, so I lift my rifle
and send tiny black stars into the soldiers' foreheads.
Jesus, his poor ruined face, loaks up, amazed, down.
A hot wind lifts our breath blazing through his crown
as thorns, bone chips of antlers fly off around us.

Now the crowd sways and falls back down the path.
Our brother, the soft fish body alive and alone,
starts calmly through the streets. Empty and dim, there
is no end, I know, to this dream. Jesus, this circle
is tighter even as it lightens and shrinks. Listen,
everyone sweet and cruel, we die or rise, amazed.