Back to Issue 10

Frank Paino

Candlemas, 1933
(The Papin Sisters)

Now that we have sluiced the blood
from our bodies…now that we have put away

the hammer and kitchen knife,
set the pewter vase back on its tapered pedestal,

come lie beside me in this darkness
that gathered around the burnt glass fuse and

filled these sterile rooms, first with evening’s
half-light, and now with black the colour of

our maidservant clothes.
In a handful of hours the vendors will

push their carts along the cobblestones.
Monsignor shall bless the tallow and wicks

that will illuminate the coming year.
He will pray to the Virgin who once more enters

the Temple, rendered pure by forty days
of solitude and no touch from Joseph’s hand.

Lea, in another life I was your husband
and you were the girl who drove me to my knees.

How odd is Fate to send me back your sister--
the one who waited seven years for you to grow round

beneath Mother’s tattered gowns.
And now we have labored that same measure

under this slate and copper roof.
You on your hands and knees before the silk hems

of that simpering brat, your beautiful mouth
stitched with pins and winking silver needles, 

while I stooped over gas jets, the stench of
fish and onions in my nostrils.  And everywhere

the polished silver bells to summon us
from each other…a bejeweled finger stabbed here

or there to spare them from having to speak
so much as a syllable to their mute handmaids,

the two of us supposed to smile as if we might 
pray each day to kiss the soles of their sleek

Parisian  boots.  Tonight, when your iron
scorched its shadow across

Mademoiselle’s favourite blouse and the 
house fell to its sunset gold 

after a shower of sparks at the wall-plate,
we knew without having to say a word

there would be nothing left to do
but what we had to do.  They would have

broken you with kicks and curses and
the strap that hangs behind the pantry door,

sent us into savage streets with no
letter in hand, the coins we’ve earned

locked fast within their cellar safe.
Lea, I could never let them touch you again.

You are safe now, my Precious One.
There is nothing between us but our own

scrubbed flesh.  Let me hold you one more time 
inside the narrow space of this attic bed.

Let me swallow you like salvation.
Soon enough the world will rush around us

like so much water from a cleaning pail.
Soon enough they will understand what we have

always known—behind those lovely, painted faces,
there was nothing beautiful at all.

Frank Paino’s first two volumes of poetry were published by Cleveland State University Press. His current work appears in Gettysburg Review and The Comstock Review. Other work is forthcoming in Briar Cliff Review and Catamaran Literary Reader. Frank was the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council 2016 Individual Excellence Award. His poem, “Skeleton Lake,” was selected as the winner of the 2016 Crab Orchard Review Special Feature Award and will be published in the summer of 2017. He is seeking a publisher for his third manuscript while currently at work on his fourth.

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