{"id":2926,"date":"2017-02-21T01:06:17","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T01:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/poetry\/?page_id=2926"},"modified":"2017-02-21T01:08:35","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T01:08:35","slug":"vincent-francone-winter-2017","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/poetry\/archives\/vincent-francone-winter-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Vincent Francone, Winter 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

Library Angels<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lately I\u2019ve come to the fulcrum<\/span><\/p>\n

and been aside too far.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Puffy-faced in shibboleth, I walk from the Chicago stop<\/span><\/p>\n

into the <\/span>fusillade of lakewind. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My morning is bereft.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ice in my lungs talismans smoker\u2019s years<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and the library door is too heavy today.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no respite, though I\u2019d likely sleep<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

if I dare in the stacks next to my office,<\/span><\/p>\n

curl up with a tome for pillow<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

my clothing at once too meek,<\/span><\/p>\n

my skin the paper,<\/span><\/p>\n

last night\u2019s bellyfull of <\/span><\/p>\n

soup kitchen kindness via church dictum,<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

my head aware of quiet hours<\/span><\/p>\n

one ear alert for the librarian<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

coming to plug the shelfgaps and scatter<\/span><\/p>\n

the unruly of Streeterville drawn <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

into this warmth, the glow of fluorescents<\/span><\/p>\n

angels at dawn <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\f<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All These Women<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Good morning to you, Mr. Harrison<\/span><\/p>\n

who died without ado though<\/span><\/p>\n

I was more than a little taken aback<\/span><\/p>\n

when I read the news\u2014on my smartphone <\/span><\/p>\n

on the toilet\u2014and couldn\u2019t wait to tell someone<\/span><\/p>\n

specifically my wife who has read you<\/span><\/p>\n

and loves what Hollywood did to your novella<\/span><\/p>\n

though I recall all the women I knew who loved<\/span><\/p>\n

the way you wrote women<\/span><\/p>\n

such insight\u2014was this the product of sustained attention <\/span><\/p>\n

or storybook love or were there women from the beginning<\/span><\/p>\n

cooing around you as you squirmed in Michigan grass<\/span><\/p>\n

women who taught you to be among them<\/span><\/p>\n

and then men who taught you to drink and fight<\/span><\/p>\n

against the bullies who saw in your glass eye<\/span><\/p>\n

their own fallow guts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Were the cocaine and the bottle to blame,<\/span><\/p>\n

or the outlets of someone who understood <\/span><\/p>\n

too well his wife and his daughters?<\/span><\/p>\n

How did you cultivate this ability<\/span><\/p>\n

without sacrificing the grand posture?<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m thinking of my mother<\/span><\/p>\n

In her car leaving to work <\/span><\/p>\n

and me with her ex-mother-in-law<\/span><\/p>\n

cooking oatmeal and yelling her daughter\u2019s name<\/span><\/p>\n

the staid voices, the way they all seemed so light and loud <\/span><\/p>\n

all these women I have <\/span><\/p>\n

to tell me what you apparently knew <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m walking then with them<\/span><\/p>\n

to school where nuns will scare us all to death. <\/span><\/p>\n

\f<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Perfect Child<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The dream ended without pomp.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was little else to sift<\/span><\/p>\n

just fragments of some sunken dirge<\/span><\/p>\n

wayward missives, my mind taking out<\/span><\/p>\n

the trash of whatever beset the day.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet I felt more unease in the dark<\/span><\/p>\n

than any boyhood premonition<\/span><\/p>\n

the certainty that a grizzly, dumb<\/span><\/p>\n

destiny awaits, only patient as long<\/span><\/p>\n

as the night, and the night was still<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

clinging to the side of the hull<\/span><\/p>\n

absent more than a single purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n

And there was nothing else to do<\/span><\/p>\n

but relent, cry, accept the perfect child<\/span><\/p>\n

the nightmare had me. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\f<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Voyeur <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As a boy, I was told that God was omnipresent<\/span><\/p>\n

watching my every endeavor,<\/span><\/p>\n

to watch myself, guard against the impure<\/span><\/p>\n

act or thought, it made no difference\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

however small it may seem<\/span><\/p>\n

nothing escapes the Supreme Being.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How to react to God the spy?<\/span><\/p>\n

No mention of why exactly <\/span><\/p>\n

he needed to know my activity<\/span><\/p>\n

real or imagined, one and the same,<\/span><\/p>\n

apparently both causes for shame.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How else to react? \u00a0I placed out of sight<\/span><\/p>\n

those thoughts I wanted to conceal <\/span><\/p>\n

in my mind\u2019s bottom drawer <\/span><\/p>\n

and hid them from the omnipotent voyeur <\/span><\/p>\n

unconcerned with how I feel<\/span><\/p>\n

and how it felt to get up to<\/span><\/p>\n

what I got up to at night,<\/span><\/p>\n

which felt oh so good.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\f<\/i>Admission <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you said you\u2019d kill yourself <\/span><\/p>\n

before the week was through<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019d feel the conflict <\/span><\/p>\n

of a whippoorwill<\/span><\/p>\n

or of the hand that pilots<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

a drone and considers <\/span><\/p>\n

every remote dot<\/span><\/p>\n

weighs their sentience <\/span><\/p>\n

ponders the lot<\/span><\/p>\n

and passes sentence <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Vincent Francone is a writer from Chicago whose memoir, Like a Dog<\/i>, was published in the fall of 2015.\u00a0 He won first place in the 2009 Illinois Emerging Writers Competition (Gwendolyn Brooks Award) and is at work on a collection of poems and stories. Visit\u00a0 www.vincentfrancone.com<\/a> to read his work or say hi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Library Angels   Lately I\u2019ve come to the fulcrum and been aside too far.   Puffy-faced in shibboleth, I walk from the Chicago stop into the fusillade of lakewind.   My morning is bereft. The ice in my lungs talismans smoker\u2019s years   and the library door is too heavy today. There is no respite, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":934,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2926","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nVincent Francone, Winter 2017 - Full Of Crow: Poetry (Archives)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/poetry\/archives\/vincent-francone-winter-2017\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vincent Francone, Winter 2017 - Full Of Crow: Poetry (Archives)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Library Angels   Lately I\u2019ve come to the fulcrum and been aside too far.   Puffy-faced in shibboleth, I walk from the Chicago stop into the fusillade of lakewind.   My morning is bereft. 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