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.