Poet Spotlight: Rickey Laurentiis

Mood for Love

____________NEW ORLEANS, LA

____________AUGUST, 2005

 

______1.

(There I go.)  I am the man /

stepping up to the water. I am not /

the man I leave behind, /

his arms snapped before him (at me)— /

taut as when a whip

means giddyap, move. Yes, my knees

are trembling, like water remembering.

I suffer, I am that man ready to quit.

Should I turn back will I face—?

Should I turn back—?

Should I turn back will I have to face

his palms (they are your palms)

open and pushing me to river—?

Will I hear them cry Have faith—?

 

______2.

In the story, Jesus follows

the fishermen after he tells the fishermen

to sail ahead. Yes, he is anointed. Yes,

he is blessed. But what matters

are his eyes, fixed on the fishermen.

Then begins his walking mystery.

No injury. Each step a step toward

the brotherhood there in that boat in the lake.

It is as if each step is carried by

that brotherhood rough in the lake.

He’s hardly wet as they drag him in,

those fishermen, except as he kisses

each of them and they, thunderstruck

(devoted), kiss him back.

 

______3.

(There I go.) I am the man

stepping onto the water (in the story,

water simply obeys) because

you’ve told me so, told me the duties

of the struck-in-love (as my soul

as I go will obey). Here is our home.

Here is the hole in the roof from where

we escaped our home (the water rising).

Here on this roof: I look out at the river expanded.

(I suffer, I am that man anonymous in the waves.)

We need food. (I was there.) We need water.

(There I go.) I am the man stepping onto

the sick water (let it obey). And you are the man

who follows.

 

Take it Easy

 

 

That the light stalks your skin,

no, that your skin makes it: a radiating

hum, jive, a freedom, a beehive

packed just as much with honey as does it

hazard; also, a balm for where the sting sits,

a treaty, country upon which I first

laid my claim, but was usurped; where

carefully do I move to cross it again. Now here

come my lips to it, pink over your body’s

good bark. Now here is my mouth, entire.

I’m scared of you, baby, it says, scared like a god

is of his faithful—and like the faithful. Light

-struck. Delighted. Terrorstuck. Come, lift up

your gates, your countenance spread like a lily upon me:

whip me, I am so whipped. These are my eyes.

 

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Rickey Laurentiis was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. The recipient of fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Atlantic Center for the Arts as well as a Work-Study Scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Indiana Review, jubilat, Knockout Literary Magazine and other journals. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Washington University in St Louis where he is a Chancellor’s fellow. Visit him at http://rickeylaurentiis.com/.