Our only friends in the new apartment building
are in their late 80s. They pour cocktails every day
at four. Sal offers martinis
punctuated with blue-cheese olives and dirty ice.
Ice holds flavor from the shaker, he says.
A former prisoner of war, he won’t attract nightmares
discussing days he lost faith and found it
in himself. He doesn’t believe
life extends beyond this one. This is it.
Calls his wife beautiful.
He said there’s always another place,
forced to move weeks
before his 89th birthday.
Bernadine left the convent at 32.
Doubt turned to atheism in the wake of leaving.
She passes peel-n-eat shrimp
explaining how questions entered
in the 50s––Pope John’s encyclical
gathered a strangeness in her
to see beyond the rafters.
When assigned to work near a vast
library housing work by Jean-Paul Sartre,
Sartre informed her: You are – your life, and nothing else.
I admire how they don’t fear
Dante or his inferno––feel no reason
to abandon or hope.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 6.
A poem by Paula Colangelo will be featured soon on the podcast The Slowdown. Paula’s poetry is published in The Comstock Review, Salamander, Sugar House Review, SWWIM Every Day, and Lily Poetry Review. She has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and her chapbook, Apartment Logic for Night Owls, was chosen as a semifinalist in the Flume Press Chapbook Contest. Her book reviews appear in Pleiades and Rain Taxi. She has taught poetry in healing focused rehabilitation programs and served on the board of the Hudson Valley Writers Center.
See all items about Paula Colangelo
