Sample Poems by Joseph Gastiger

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Why Cedronello

Sometimes I’m asked how I wound up this way;
I mean, wearing a name that’s two sizes
too big, like a cap falling over my eyes
anywhere I go. Cedronello, my teacher

would sigh, as if she might remember
a village someplace where gnarled cedars
and cypresses clung to a crag overlooking the sea.
Yet the truth is my mother, before I was born,

scrubbed the hallways of rundown apartments
all day, and one morning she found, neatly
lettered in sage ink, a name on a mail slot,
which sounded like glass bells from far away.

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Two Or Three Reasons I Didn’t Like School

Vito Da Luca wasn’t so big—face
like a monkey, couldn’t write a paragraph—
but he could wrestle, and he hated me.
He’d lie in wait outside of metal shop,

shove me against a wall; call me a queer,
and there was nothing I could do. Except
push back, and get pinned to the floor, until
beefy Dominicans parted the crowd;

they’d make us clean toilets for a week. Oh, but
Vito didn't have to; he was a wrestler.
I’d watch him swagger to the gym, and next
day at chapel, he’d make Giulia laugh.

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On My Choice Of Profession


One look at me, and you’d know I’m no good
with my hands, so I can’t repair clocks,
and I’ve never built one bird house from scrap
the way Arturo did. But one thing I am

good for, better than most, is figuring out
how to get home from whatever corner
my restless legs take me to, sober or drunk.
So I became a bus driver. In time,

I knew each ragged boy riding from church
to church hawking cheap toys. Every well-dressed
old gentleman still courting his first love,
someone who probably died long ago.

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Campanilismo


Maybe the bell tower near where I live
isn’t the tallest in all Italy,
but it’s as tall and as loud as any
tower I need. The cherries and melons

I buy at the grocery may not be
as fresh as I’d like, it’s true, but Celia’s
my neighbor; her husband’s an invalid,
so what the hell. I get my sausages,

too, from a butcher I’ve known half my life,
not some stranger who, no matter how hard
he tries, still has no idea who lived where
once, and for how long, and never will.