Ben Nardolilli

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Seaside Donations

The bouquet of stars
That the night sky has given you,
You turn away from,
If the sky was not so large
It would be offended.

And though the sea is dark,
It stretches out for you
In its infinite waving mirror
Hoping to hold your face
In its broad wet palm.

You are right to refuse the sand,
The napkins, the glass, the cigarettes,
The broken presents it gives you
Are generous but worth nothing,
You prefer what you can hold at once.

I have still not made a gesture
To present anything of value,
I am in one piece
But the things I offer
Are bigger than us both.



Dream Architecture

The room holds him
Dressed in white,
He rises and abandons
His impression on the bed.

Out by the road
He drifts, pure salesman,
By tractor and rail road,
He maneuvers directions.

Into the forest he walks
Over the fallen flames
Of leaves piled around trunks,
He sleeps under branches.

In the farm left vacant
He takes vacations,
The livestock ignore him,
He takes beams as souvenirs.

In the snow he stretches
All the lines together,
His fence sags and the flakes
Cover his stolen work.

And when the grass returns,
He sprouts again by a barn,
To walk in the wind
Half human and half sail.



Attempt at Home Movies

The setting is in a restaurant.

Any old eatery, but not so old, they chased us away. They saw us
coming with camera and papers and said they wanted nothing of us. They
told us to go to Hollywood, we told them that we came here because we
wanted clouds in the background and were too poor to make them…

In the first scene, a man is about to propose marriage to his girlfriend.

One hand in his pocket he fiddles with a ring. We focus on this hand
shaking in the cloth tent in his pants. No one knows where he is yet,
we think he’s a pervert. In fact, for the whole scene we think he is
one, been a pervert all his life…

In the second scene, a rich movie star is trying to get a free meal.

Blonde hair and a white dress? Too obvious, they will think she is in
the wrong kind of movies. No, she has black hair that shines like a
dominatrix’s boots and she rules over the attention of everyone in the
lite-greasy spoon, everyone except the man with his hand violently in
his pocket. The audience’s opinion has not changed…

In the third scene, a mouse is seen in the room.

Okay. Let’s work with it




Sucklings Still

We once laughed together
At the creaking sounds
Our civilization’s hobble
Used to make for us

In the night we shared
Every doubt together,
We roamed rich in cynicism,
Pure as the knife with our steps

I called the dawn the work
Of a lazy moon burning,
I kept the curtains together
And hoped you would stay

The light reached you
And though I claimed
It was a clever lamp,
You wanted to rise up

Now you march and sing
With the others,
Your new family gives you
Nothing but smiles for a legacy

Yet you tell me to come,
Turn myself from being
A collection of interesting bones,
Have a heart, you say

You know where it is
My little stethoscope,
Carried away by your ear,
When we tired of discussion.



His Feet in the Yellow Flags

Horrible mutinous roles now in flames
Were based on producing,

The viewer eats, and the king is planned,
Scholars float accessibly,

A challenge to Berlin, and to the stars,
A note drifts from the explosion,

The operation plots its own course now,
The way to a group goes.


Ben says: A little bit about myself, I am a twenty five year old writer
currently living in Montclair, New Jersey. My work has appeared in the
Houston Literary Review, Perigee Magazine, Canopic Jar, One Ghana One
Voice, Baker’s Dozen, Thieves Jargon, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae,
Poems Niederngasse, Gold Dust, Scythe, Anemone Sidecar, The Delmarva
Review, Contemporary American Voices, SoMa Literary Review, Gloom
Cupboard, Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue, Black Words on White Paper,
Cantaraville, and Mad Swirl. In addition I was the poetry editor for
West 10th Magazine at NYU and maintain a blog at
mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.