John L. Stanizzi
Comet
Not until years later did I wonder if,
as you stood naked at the bathroom mirror,
you were examining the thick crescent
ripped from your armpit all the way to where
your breast had been,
or if, in the silky blue of your eyes,
you caught a glimpse of yourself as a girl,
and were you thinking of your husband
when you ran a finger across the bone under your eye?
When I thought of evenings lolling in a hot bath,
watching you get ready for bed,
I’d see your hair, which was always up
in a tight, flat, white bun
against the back of your head,
until it was time for you to brush it,
and then you’d let it tumble down your back
white and shining from the top of your head
down to your knees, white,
and then eight inches of jet black at the end,
a comet dropping headlong into the past.
John L. Stanizzi’s poems have appeared in The New York Quarterly, Tar River Poetry, Rattle, Freshwater, Passages North, The Spoon River Quarterly, Poet Lore, The Connecticut River Review, Stone Country, Hawk & Handsaw, Gutter Eloquence, SNReview, and many others. Sleepwalking (2009) and Ecstasy Among Ghosts (2007), now in its 3rd printing, are available from Antrim House. In 1998, Mr. Stanizzi was named The New England Poet of the Year by The New England Association of Teachers of English. John has read at many venues throughout Connecticut, including RJ Julia (Madison), WordForge (Hartford), The Hygienic Gallery (New London), MishiMayaGat (Manchester), The Connecticut Poetry Circuit at Manchester Community College, Poetry on the Line (Windsor), The Asnuntuck Poetry Festival (Enfield), with Gerald Stern at the Mystic Arts Center (Mystic), and many others. This past summer he introduced Dick Allen at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival in Farmington with a lecture/discussion session prior to the reading, and he was a judge for the 2011 Connecticut Book Award for Poetry. John’s newest book, Dance Against the Wall, will be out in early 2012.
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