From cartoons for a poem “Among a bar cabal”
Nicholas Regiacorte | Poetry
⛭
Among a bar cabal of aesthetes, one
likens bodies in Gazan dirt to Michelangelo’s unfinished slaves. Another
read that black holes were like blown glass, a bottle with an infinitely
long neck and enormous if invisible belly. The interior is larger than
the exterior. These beasts chiacchierando this way, while draining long
stem glasses. The imagination strains–but not too far, until the poem’s
x-ray penetrates a wall of bottles and we follow. Past the lake’s shore,
up the wooded slope of Monte Brione. A kilometer deep, let’s say,
where we find a tagged wolf with the chamois kid whose stomach it’s
torn open. The poem in both worlds now, one clinking like an
electrolier, the other quiet as blood draining from–or rising into–a
face.
Nicholas Regiacorte is the author of American Massif, published by Tupelo Press. His poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, New American Writing, Bennington Review, Colorado Review, Dialogist, Peripheries and elsewhere. Currently, he lives with his family in Illinois, where he teaches at Knox College and directs its program in creative writing.