{"id":810,"date":"2010-07-05T16:13:04","date_gmt":"2010-07-05T21:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fullofcrow.com\/poetry\/?p=810"},"modified":"2010-07-05T16:13:04","modified_gmt":"2010-07-05T21:13:04","slug":"lia-mastropolo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/poetry\/2010\/07\/lia-mastropolo\/","title":{"rendered":"Lia Mastropolo"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Organ Grinder<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Stillness<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/em>
\n\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/strong>
\n
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

The Organ Grinder<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cExtortion to keep quiet,\u201d the side note says,
\nthe monkey balanced, birdlike,
\non epauletted shoulder.
\nThe organ has a grate like the front
\nof a nineteen-fifties Cadillac
\nand now I see the error\u2014
\n……<\/span>braille nubs of the music box<\/em>
\n ……<\/span>lulling the child to sleep<\/em>
\nThe song’s a dirge,
\nthe monkey’s weak with fleas.
\n <\/em>
\nA child, feeling blindly
\nfor the edges of the world,
\nI grasped upon my father’s sausage-making
\n……<\/span>(wine, friends, football)
\nThe recipe: shoulder, liver, a bit of cheese.
\nThe source: A piglet down the street,
\n…..<\/span>weaned and grown.
\n <\/em>
\nI watched him suckle,
\nwatched the plow of ears
\nand blindness of the young\u2014
\nfat, hairless, skin the color of my own.
\n <\/em>
\nAfter the first scare
\nit gets easier to dine on flesh,
\n……<\/span>digesting as the earth
\n……<\/span>digests itself: meat to dirt.
\n <\/em>
\nAnd so I imagined the organ grinder\u2014
\ninput of liver and heart, music the product,
\nlike sausage, to be savored as life
\n<\/em>
\nBut years, it seems, fold
\n……<\/span>like an accordion\u2014
\nnow I call it human
\n……<\/span>the dirge:
\ncreased cheek, the skin’s the first to go.
\n<\/em>
\nFather in his armchair
\nsmoke suspended in the waiting air.
\n<\/em>
\nA few cells grind this body’s
\n……<\/span>meat, their canon
\nthe athlete’s trope: fight<\/em>
\n<\/em>
\nOf all I’ll remember, this:
\nA 10th<\/sup> street vendor’s counter
\nand dad gulping tripe
\nafter the first scare
\n……<\/span>slow down<\/em>, I tell him,
\n……<\/span>its feathered edges
\nghostlike in the blood-greased
\nmeat sauce of the market<\/p>\n


\n<\/em>
\n\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Stillness<\/strong><\/p>\n

The desert here is due
\nan earthquake: swarm
\nor stick-slip surely, stored from
\nshear and richness of kinetic
\nearthweight\u2014tensely brittle, visible
\nalmost in the way acacias
\n……<\/span>clutch the earth.
\n<\/em>
\nBut the body’s first response
\nto trauma is swelling,
\ncushion of plasma and
\nhemoglobin, stone’s opposite.
\nGummed lashes from a night of tears.
\n<\/em>
\nThe error is not place,
\nbut scale.
\nThe mystery:
\n……<\/span>that we still build,
\n<\/em>
\nsensing as acacias sense
\nthe sticking rock under the homes,
\nthe slip that’s long past due.<\/p>\n

Lia Mastropolo is an aspiring science writer and graduate student living in\u00a0Philadelphia. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in <\/em>Pindeldyboz, <\/em>Peaks & Valleys, <\/em>Two Hawks Quarterly, and <\/em>Home Education Magazine.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Organ Grinder After Stillness The Organ Grinder \u201cExtortion to keep quiet,\u201d the side note says, the monkey balanced, birdlike, on epauletted shoulder. The organ has a grate like the front of a nineteen-fifties Cadillac and now I see the error\u2014 ……braille nubs of the music box ……lulling the child to sleep The song’s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[47],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-july-2010","tag-lia-mastropolo"],"yoast_head":"\nLia Mastropolo - 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\/2010\/07\/lia-mastropolo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lia Mastropolo - Full Of Crow: Poetry (Archives)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Organ Grinder After Stillness The Organ Grinder \u201cExtortion to keep quiet,\u201d the side note says, the monkey balanced, birdlike, on epauletted shoulder. 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