Kristin Camitta Zimet 


PORTRAIT OF PAOLO

Long loops of conversation ooze 
from his wife's mouth like dough 
cranked through her pasta maker, 
so many questions poking soft heads through 
like worms on a wet lawn he will not mow, 
pointing and wriggling down 
into limp circles on the countertop 
till the water heats to heaving, 
and the pot thickens with them as reply
thickens in his throat. 
He can never find an end to them,
winding them on his fork, against his spoon,
turned serpentine, too fat to lift, 
the enormity of his fifty years 
served up: night after night 
semolina sifts over the angel hair
circuits he's paid to fix, over the twisted tape
of his buddy's death, over the roads 
that stretch and fold between him and his sons.
On the white sheets his wife
rolls him into her arms.
It is not enough, this earthy dust,
this seed crushed into a damp meal.
The grinding years have left him flabby white
as manicotti, boiled and unfilled. 
 

Copyright 2000, Kristin Camitta Zimet 
 

Kristin Camitta Zimet's first collection of poems, Take in My Arms the Dark, was published by the Sow's Ear Press in 1999. 

Switched-on Gutenberg/Vol. 4, No. 2