Anthony DeGregorio
Sitting in Putnam Hospital Center Lobby
Half the conversations in the hospital’s lobby today pause—
The passing speaker stops walking to sip coffee; fumbles for keys;
Turns to face the listener for emphasis or in surprise—
Then resume along with the hurried strides
Even more determined on departure, soles treading,
Tearing away awkwardly loud, aware with each step
Of the adhesions to a well-travelled floor,
And have, for the most part,
To do with eating and shitting,
The other exchanges mostly centering around fear, famine, death, and/or guilt.
It’s so much like being back at the dinner table when I was growing up
That I expect my father to resurrect himself, fork in dirt-blotched hand,
Cutlery still sanguine with tomato sauce, damp earth tone dark
With braciola, the speared meat and its guts
Shred between the tines,
Asking if I was learning anything in school, and reminding everyone
Before I could answer that the toothpicks and string,
Used to hold the rolled delight together, be saved for future use.
And my mother to ponder aloud in her chair
(as if I were not there)
When someone was going to cut my hair.
Her 180º dramatically subtle surveillance
For a coiffeur’s apparition, hovering
In a corner only she knew back then,
(Not unlike her own glow
In this lobby now) His
Hands slick with
Shampoo
Dripping, extended
Over a sink still warm
From drained pasta water
And coated in the milky trans-
Lucency of starch residue, adding
Italian special effects to this eerie scene,
As her eyes continued slowly moving, left
To right, from appliance to menacing appliance,
Her face and body contorting, exaggerated
In silent movie mannerisms secretly un-
Folding before the green screen of
Our kitchen’s fruit wallpaper.
A crescendo of suspenseful music muted …
(The crackling chaos of memory’s bleary background reverberating with commercials and news pouring from AM stations and syphoned through a brown RCA radio suspended on a small wooden shelf adjacent to the classic Last Supper reproduction witnessing every meal we had in that kitchen, jingles for cigarettes & gum beer & Brylcreem manically upbeat preceding or following AP reports and local human interest stories of tragedy or triumph)
… the sound of snipping silver scissors,
A strange metallic staccato conjuring imminent loss
Among my then-thick long strands,
A thatch of curly brown hysteria
Tremoring #$^()_*%@!
Standing frizzily
On end.
I am hallucinating the smells of broccoli rabe and chicken z’armi,
The language of lost years and shadows, of insecurity and grief,
In the unseasoned aesthetic of a hospital lobby,
As the elevators open and close,
For visitors and patients;
Doctors on cell phones looking distracted as discontinued monitors
As they increase the pace of their gait toward the rear exit;
The lost faces of those holding no change of clothes,
No newly released book to finish, returning for a last stay;
The newborn wide eyes mapping a strange geography,
Bound and bundled bodies in blankets on a summer day.
All the while smiling volunteers in bright jackets at the front desk struggle to
Two-finger type long consonant laden names for room number inquiries.
The faint smell of disinfectant and oatmeal
From the floors above mists the still air
Stirred only now when a body passes.
A door is held open too long.
An absentminded exit
Prolongs in
Pause—
Catches in a slowly revolving door.
Beyond its strained curved glass
A circling lane leads out off the grounds.
Valets at another entrance to the left
Repeatedly leave and return throughout the day.
A vague humidity pressing upon the windows
Overcasts the view into the back parking lot
That I’ve blurred for forty minutes.
The roped off player piano begins a new tune,
A text vibrates a shirt pocket, a pant leg, into a sweaty palm
Bleeding the BiC-Blue of a paperless reminder,
A phone number, an errand, a name,
Scrawled into clammy flesh, smeared, lost forever
To anxiety-stained memory and primary hyperhidrosis.
How’s he doing today? Any better? How does she feel? Any change?
Same. :( …
Anthony DeGregorio’s writing has appeared or is scheduled to appear in various publications including Mande, Yellow Mama, Yearling, The Raven Review, TheRavensPerch, Libre, Abandoned Mine, Italian America Magazine, Phantom Drift, Aromatica Poetica, Bloom, Nowhere, Wales Haiku Journal, Polu Texni, and So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. He taught writing at Manhattanville College for twenty years, and in another life or two or three he worked in various capacities for the Department of Social Services, much of that time while teaching at night. Prior to that, and brief stints at a myriad of jobs in another century beyond time, is anyone’s guess, but please don’t let that stop you.
