JOHN L. STANIZZI - POEMS

John L. Stanizzi is author of the collections – Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits, and Chants.  His newest collection, Sundowning, will be out this year with Main Street Rag.  John’s poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Blue Mountain Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, Rust & Moth, Connecticut River Review, Hawk & Handsaw, and many others.  His work has been translated into Italian and appeared in many journals in Italy.  His translator is Angela D’Ambra.  John has read and venues all over New England, including the Mystic Arts Café, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Hartford Stage, and many others.  For many years, John coordinated the Fresh Voices Poetry Competition for Young Poets at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT.  He is also a teaching artist for the national recitation contest, Poetry Out Loud.  A former New England Poet of the Year, John teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT and he lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.

​4.9.2019
8.16 a.m.
36 degrees

​Posh air, mist-filled fog, and yesterday’s rain has left the world soaked.
Ovate leaves on a plant that grows like lettuce – perhaps amaranth –
nicely bunched and succulent, a burst of maroon on each leaf, it
dwells low in the stream, spring’s overflow in sheer ripples around it.

​4.10.2019
12.54 a.m.
44 degrees

​Prequel to color and hot breeze, these wood violets in bunches,
overlap the new grass and the stream that flows around them.
Nomads on the wind, one spring they’re here, another there,
denizens of the wetland, underfoot, raggy, and full of spring’s subtle colors.
 

​4.11.19
7.19 a.m.
32 degrees

​Paired mallards, their reflections lustrous, the morning’s calm
ours – I pretend I am not encroaching on them, though of course I am.
noir necks with white pearls just the right length, below their viridian heads;
ducks I have waited for you for months.  Welcome to the pond.
 

​4.12.19
9.08 a.m.
43 degrees

​Pacey footfalls this morning, hoping that the ducks
overstayed my interruption yesterday, but they are gone.
Now’s the time for the pond to begin to awaken, however, and the
dreck of last season’s leaves become the birthplace of so many.

PHOTOS FROM THE POET