Meditation at Niagara Falls, New York
The day breaks like a glacier.
My mind is an aria of fever, in red air ablaze,
a clammy crescendo, as I talk on the phone
with friends and colleagues
during a meeting where I am supposed to be
attending in person. But I am too sick
to be around people. I cough. My thoughts sink
like rocks in a lake
as everyone speaks. I look
on my laptop screen: my friend Alan, eyebrows
and tuxedo on fleek, posing with Tony Lo Bianco, star
of stage and screen, for a picture taken
by his spouse, freshly posted
on Facebook and The Gram.
My soul is a waterfall, cascading
as I take another pill; as I sip another cup
of Chamomile tea, my joints aching,
I say goodbye and hang up. I thank
the man upstairs for my spouse’s chicken soup; I think
of how Washington DC would be
a closed amusement park to me
if I was there like I planned; asking Tony what it was like
to have worked with Gene Hackman, who is
sometimes Popeye Doyle to me, other times Lex Luthor,
as well as Roy Scheider, both of whom were
in The French Connection with him. But I think
of Roy as Chief Brody in Jaws, ever since
since I was 10 years old, when I saw
French Connection and Jaws on TV, Cable
for the first time. Roy died
in 2008. The way I feel today
makes me think of my own death: would any
of the people I spoke with earlier
go to my wake or funeral
if I die before them? How long
will I suffer? Will I be alone?
Will I be in my own bed? Or in a hospital room,
like all of the women, natives and immigrants alike
in my family thus far? A hospice? A different country?
I am home. I have not left it
in a week, but it feel as if I have returned
from my nation’s capital.
I am not afraid exactly, but I have more
questions and concerns,
all of which will be answered in time;
all of which will be addressed in time;
like snow later on tonight; the weatherman
with the dashing moustache on TV, remarking
about a couple bundled up in Cobalt
blue jackets, their laughter sprays in water
onto a rusted hand rail, my head on fire.
| Joey Nicoletti |
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levelheaded: Meditation at Niagara Falls, New York
The first line of this poem, “The day breaks like a glacier,” sets us up for what’s to come. The movement of glacier becomes a metaphor for the movement of this speaker’s meditation. A glacier, of course, moves slowly. And yet when it hits the water at its terminus, it breaks apart spectacularly. The speaker’s meditation contains both long meandering and momentary spectacle. His choppy movements from personal concern to pop culture to abstraction coalesce into a funny, thoughtful poetic experience. The poem itself is one of infinite endpoints to a glacially momentous inner life.
The narrative is simple. The speaker is ill, so he’s missed a meeting in Washington, DC. While on a conference call to that meeting, he sees a social media post of his friend Alan with an old movie star, Tony Lo Bianco. During the meeting and after it ends, he contemplates life, death, and 1970’s American cinema.
But part of what’s special about the poem is the way it effortlessly conflates the contemporary and the nostalgic. In an early moment, the poem throws phrases like “on fleek” and “The Gram” alongside a reference to a photo of Tony Lo Bianco. At once, the 1970’s and mid-2010’s are united. Time is often flattened like this in our memories, but the poem goes further by observing the way internet culture can replace, or at least emulate, the way memory works. A cheesin’ photo on the internet is this poem’s madeleine. And it’s easy to think that many of us are eating as many madeleines as we can get our hands on, constantly, all day long. Comically, the speaker jumps right from the instagram photo into his corniest line: “My soul is a waterfall.” It’s a line that can’t be taken seriously, but one that works well to characterize our speaker as someone who wants to glean meaning from things, even as he battles brain fog and fever with a bowl of chicken soup.
On the surface, this is an easy read. But it’s a dense poem, and there is plenty to unpack. What seem like arbitrary thoughts of a few Gene Hackman and Roy Schneider film roles lead to a contemplation of the speaker’s own death. That contemplation leads back to the DC meeting. And in the end, the mustachioed weatherman, the laughing couple, and the roundabout thoughts of our ill speaker all happen at once. The poem’s best message may be that nothing truly separates the events of a world constructed by our own thoughts. The miles and minutes between us can’t stand up to our own minds.
-The Editors
