I had a busy and not-so-restful “staycation” in Syracuse this past week with events tied to the launch of my book, Stunted: A Memoir of Delayed Manhood. On Tuesday, June 23, I traveled to my hometown of Rome, New York, for a book reading at Jervis Public Library.

I hadn’t visited the city since Thanksgiving, and the maple trees were in full bloom with branches overhanging the streets in north Rome, presenting a dense, chartreuse canopy. Here’s a picture of some trees I saw near Jervis’s parking lot.

Since my dad, mother, and stepfather have all passed away, I don’t get back to the Copper City very often, and when driving northbound on Black River Boulevard or James Street, I feel more like a visitor than a native Roman. But even so, Rome will always be home to me.

I met my friend Bill Vinci (host of The Empire Plate web show) in the parking lot of Jervis, and we talked for about twenty minutes before he had to leave for a fantasy baseball meeting. It was a beautiful summer night, and attendance was sparse for the reading. But a former neighbor, some friends from high school, my brother, Dirk, and his partner, Donna, and my friend, Bill Soldato (author “Billy the Liquor Guy”) showed up, and I was able to reminisce and catch up with them.

Most of all, I was elated to be holding an event inside the confines of Jervis Public Library—reading from a book I had actually written. That’s because when I was a child, I discovered a love of books and reading at Jervis. And while I attended Mass at St. John the Baptist Church, Jervis served as my true cathedral of learning. It provided a foundation for what would become a literary life and was also a refuge, a safe space where I could escape the domestic unrest punctuated by my parents’ quarrels during my formative years.

During America’s Bicentennial year of 1976, my mother had enrolled me in a summer reading program at Jervis. I was six years old and turning seven that August. The librarian had divided the group into two teams, and we competed against each other for the book tally. I read eighteen books that summer, and I have the certificate to prove it.

While walking through the stacks before my reading, I remembered how the library had introduced me to writers like Ray Bradbury, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Thomas Wolfe, Albert Camus, Hermann Hesse, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Brontë, and so many others.

Later, I found some of my poetry books in Jervis’s circulating collection, resting on a shelf in the Literature section, sandwiched between poetry books written by Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson. I thought: “I’ll take it. Not too shabby company.”

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The following day, Wednesday, June 24, I appeared as a guest on the lifestyle show Bridge Street on WSYR-TV (NewsChannel 9).

I was nervous about the segment because it’s live television. And as a longtime video producer, I’m used to being behind the scenes during production (where I am most comfortable), not acting as a guest or interview subject. Fortunately, once a female member of the crew mic’d me up, and I sat in the guest chair, the interview with hosts Iris St. Meran and Erik Columbia lasted only about five minutes.

Here’s the link if you want to watch it.

I’m abstaining because I don’t want to torture myself. On the way home, I thought about five things I should have said that slipped my mind in the haze of the bright lights and nervous energy of live TV. And to protect my fragile self-esteem, I don’t want to see how I looked and sounded on screen, which I know goes against a book promoting self-acceptance. But as I said in the interview, self-acceptance is a daily effort (and a struggle for me).

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On Friday, June 26, I was fortunate to read some poems, along with three other poets, as a participant in Verse & Waltz: An Evening of Poetry and Brahms, presented by the Oneida Lake Arts and Heritage Center at St. David’s Parish Hall, in Fayetteville. One of the poems I read came from Stunted.

The theme of the night was “love,” and each poet was allotted about seven minutes. Because I do them so infrequently, I tend to overprepare for readings. I am apprehensive about reading my poems, and I feel the page is the primary home for my verses. I write to be read in text form, as opposed to being heard. So in getting ready for the event, I printed the poems I considered reading for the evening.

I ended up with too many options, but it was a great exercise because I edited a number of the poems—noticing in many places, the works would be much stronger if I cut lines. I also replaced words that would be difficult to pronounce; hence: clasps became clutches, aquiline became beak-like, and vestibule replaced lobby.

I read through my poems, then sat back and enjoyed the music in the second half of the program. And all the German waltzes and fine singing made me want to watch The Sound of Music again.

In preparing for the reading, I realized I have written many poems that have only been published in collections that are print on demand or had small print runs, meaning several verses have had limited release. I do submit poems to magazines and literary journals, but the fees restrict the number of submissions, and the competition for publication is also fierce.

So I’ll be going through my previous collections and publishing them as standalone posts on my blog.

Here are some poems culled from my potential reading list from Friday night. I’ll start with one that is unpublished.

The Safe

In my head
I know
the meaning
of living
is to unlock
the safe
enclosing
the heart
and give
what love
you own
to others.

I fall short—
collecting
but failing to
distribute
the love
I possess.
And so
I ask myself:
Just why am I
holding on to
all that surplus?

In Another Life

In another life,
we would have slow-danced
to Willie Nelson music
in a townie bar in the Catskills,
and made love in your father’s tool shed
on a Sunday afternoon.
In another life,
we would have been married
at sunset in Sylvan Beach, New York,
on a warm June night.

In another life,
we would have had a son named Isaac
and a daughter named Rose.

In another life,
I would have been a master pastry chef
and you a renowned neurosurgeon.

In another life,
troubles would have come,
as they always do,
but our love would have been unshaken.

In another life,
you would have been
more than just a glimpse,
a face in a car rushing by me
in the opposite direction.

(From Sidewalk Stories, Kelsay Books, 2017)

Mother at a School Bus Stop

A middle-aged woman with a white canvas coat
stands with her two young children
at a school bus stop on a misty gray morning.
The boy and girl are bundled up
and jabbering as they bounce around—
unaware that Mondays should be devoid of glee.

When the bus pulls up, the mother hugs the children.
The kids separate from her breast,
scurry up the steps and claim an empty seat up front.
The mother waves goodbye to the little faces
pressed against the window and watches
as the bus pushes away from the curb,
ejecting a thin cloud of exhaust.

The woman turns around,
waits for the traffic light to change
and then crosses the street,
marching up the block to return home.
Once there, dirty dishes, unmade beds and
cigarette butts heaped in black plastic ashtrays
demand her attention until mid-morning,
when the woman leaves the house and rushes to work.

She then counts down the hours
until the school bus returns to the curb
and her two kids hop off and leap into her arms,
almost in unison.

(From Dreaming of Lemon Trees: Selected Poems, Finishing Line Press, 2019)

Landscape

Beauty abounds.
Just look around
and you will see—
a quivering leaf,
a patch of grass,
billowing clouds,
and a slash of light
beneath the bridge.
It’s not a bad world, really—
we just need
to train our eyes
to gaze with wonder,
and marvel at the
transcendental pageantry.
It’s there before you.
But you must zoom out,
zoom out
and refocus the image.
There. Hold it.
Do you see it now?

(From Sidewalk Stories, Kelsay Books, 2017)

Vestiges

My parents are gone.
They walk the earth no more,
both succumbing to lung cancer,
both cremated and turned to ash.

With each passing year,
their images become more turbid in my mind,
as if their faces are shielded
by expanding gray-black clouds.
I try to retain what I remember—
my father’s deep-set, dark eyes and aquiline nose,
my mother’s small head bowed in thought or prayer
while smoking a cigarette in the kitchen.

I search for their eyes
in the constellations of the night sky.
I listen for their voices in the wind.
Is that Rite Aid plastic bag snapping in the breeze
the voice of my father whispering,
letting me know he’s still around …
somewhere … over there?
Does the squawking crow
perched in the leafless maple tree
carry the voice of my mother,
admonishing me for wearing a stained sweater?

Resorting to a dangerous habit,
I use people and objects as “stand-ins”
for my mother and father,
seeking in these replacements
some aspect of my parents’ identities.

A sloping, two-story duplex with cracked green paint
embodies the spirit of my father saddled with debt,
playing the lottery, hoping for one big payoff.
I want to climb up the porch steps and ring the doorbell,
if only to discover who resides there.

In a grocery store aisle on a Saturday night
I spot an older woman
standing in front of a row of Duncan Hines cake mixes.
With her short frame, dark hair, and glasses,
she casts a similar appearance to my mother.
She is scanning the labels,
perhaps looking for a new flavor,
maybe Apple Caramel, Red Velvet, or Lemon Supreme,
just something different to bake
as a surprise for her husband.
A feeling strikes me and
I wish to claim her as my “fill-in” mother.
I long to reach out to this stranger in the store,
fighting the compulsion
to place a hand on her shoulder
and tell her how much I miss her.

I fear that if my parents disappear
from my consciousness,
then I too will become invisible.
And the reality of a finite lifespan sets in,
as I calculate how many years I have left.
But I realize I am torturing myself
with this twisted personification game.
I must remember my parents are dead
and possess no spark of the living.
And I can no longer enslave them in my mind,
or try to resurrect them in other earthly forms.
I have to let them go.
I have to dismiss the need for physical ties,
while holding on to the memories they left behind.

And so on the night I see the woman
in the grocery store aisle,
I do not speak to her,
and she does not notice me lurking nearby.
But as I walk away from her,
I cannot resist the impulse to turn around
and look at her one last time—
just to make sure
my mother’s “double” is still standing there.
I want her to lift her head and smile at me,
but she never diverts her eyes
from the boxes of cake mixes lining the shelf.

(From Sidewalk Stories, Kelsay Books, 2017)