Poetry by Joe Bisicchia

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River Heroin

I am here as they pull out a woman, stiff and quiet as a doll, from the river. I stand rather rigid
myself, wondering. Of her rigor mortis and of the fish. The selfish still swim, even though our
town has no rivers, but we do have so much sorrow in our wake.  

Later, I walk into small church never far away, one where she and I had sung as children. I swim
up silent shiny aisle, under painted surface of low heavens. In nearing distance, the tabernacle,
far as the past. Diminishing emptiness in between, except for the coffin.

At end of her funeral, flowing outside, up to sky I hum to her a temporary goodbye. She had died
in a back alley from some insidious disease. And even now I am begging for sunlight of the river.
I want to toss my guilt toward that water and close my eyes. I want to explode. Let it be a hit
somewhere with a splash, proving life still exists, still has impact beyond the sting. I want it to
pinpoint where heaven is, something I may never be divine enough to do, and I open my eyes
hoping to see forever the ripples.

What I see, and what I hear speak behind me. Church bells, and the heels of her hearse crackle
the street as she quietly steps away. I hear her turn from the river, and so I do my best to follow.




Procession

Our lives in the city are finite, and our sufferings do end. So much disappears or just goes back to
clay. This latest funeral lines the street and makes its way. Cars follow through the red lights.
Observers, we turn and wait our greens.

Seems people brake with age quicker than their brick face estates. And all the while, the hardness
of the city returns to the softness of a backyard garden, the one we are on our way home to, as
we fill the hallowed ground. There, from all the holes the flowers arise and need tending, the
loves need mending, and the hearts need sowing, as if each is tender as the amaryllis, and yet
somehow even more enduring.

Sometimes it takes the deadness of a red light for the seed’s skin to break apart and reveal all that
streams from what was thought to be just emptiness.

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Joe Bisicchia writes of our shared dynamic. An Honorable Mention recipient for the Fernando Rielo XXXII World Prize for Mystical Poetry, his works have appeared in numerous publications including Anti-Heroin Chic. His website is www.JoeBisicchia.com.