‘Fear’s Playground’ and other poems
By: Peter J. Dellolio
Fear’s Playground
Creaking
musty
wood cart
loud rolling
crack!
black doors bang after
red power lever pulled
as the journey
begins the zigzag
angles
sharp stops and
turns each
vision fixed an illuminated
tableaux
gorilla spiders dissection
table electric
chair scorpions guillotine
screams from the
two
little girls missing
most of it
eyes half-open
finally safety of
daylight when
the cart smacks against
the exit
bored operator
lifting a sandwich
to his lips
yanks the switch
again for the
next descent
into fear’s playground.
###
It’s the Hand Trembling
It’s the hand
trembling
speaking its gestural language
she’s an old
Russian woman her clothes
exude the lingering odors
of bass and salmon
her
husband used to fish his gaff stands unwashed in the closet
without words
you still know that
she’s alone
she misses his pronounced
step his bulk his smell his
return from the bay with
a new catch and her
hand fumbles across the
bar of the shopping cart as her
head shakes back and forth
a movement that says
I’m alone I have no
choice now I can hear
my own footsteps but
I can’t hear
his voice and the
elevator descends to the
ground floor she’ll
stay until it
reaches
the
basement with the little ramp for her cart she still
has to
shop on the
crowded
avenue where she’s frightened by the noise.
###
Sand Ghost
Sand
ghost column
vertical tilting
spectral
heading across the
beach windy
burst a fat
rainbow spinning
backwards they’re
trying to retrieve the
umbrella as this
spiraling beige
phantom speeds
away.
###
After the Wave
After the wave
smashes down your
head pops out of the
hissing salty shampoo
of foamy glistening
melted
diamond light
surrounds you
a cocktail of lather
of motion coughed out
by the wave
a mouth of
glitter flesh
reaching up
falling forward
spilling its jewelry all around
your
blinking
eyes.
###
What is Invisible
What is invisible
is
the ball it’s almost dusk
this little shadow clogged yard
can’t be more than
a few feet
the chubby boy is pitching
a
candy-striped T-shirt he throws in
colored twilight
strike three!
with a little stick
dirt
will be washed by
a
mother’s hands later
a branch!
the other boy’s bat contradicts
the call because
this must be a
home run how
can any logical
adult possibly measure
the miraculous
imaginings of
children?
###
Ripple March
Bay water silent calm
flow it’s gentle near
dusk it’s slow so
easy wavelets so
tiny from winds
little bunches
of pegs swarm forward
soldiers of
water in columns moving
in rows of
patterns in
angles like sticks
cluster together breeze
nudged ahead these
ripples are so quiet as
they march to the wind
that makes their form
disappear.
###
Born 1956 New York City. Went to Nazareth High School and New York University. Graduated 1978: BA Cinema Studies; BFA Film Production. Wrote and directed various short films, including James Joyce’s short story Counterparts which he adapted into a screenplay. Counterparts was screened at national and international film festivals. A freelance writer, Peter has published many 250-1000 word articles on the arts, film, dance, sculpture, architecture, and culture, as well as fiction, poetry, one-act plays, and critical essays on art, film, and photography. Poetry collections “A Box Of Crazy Toys” published 2018 by Xenos Books/Chelsea Editions and “Bloodstream Is An Illusion Of Rubies Counting Fireplaces” published February 2023 by Cyberwit/Rochak Publishing. He is working on a critical study of Alfred Hitchcock, Hitchcock’s Cinematic World: Shocks of Perception and the Collapse of the Rational. Chapter excerpts have appeared in The Midwest Quarterly, Literature/Film Quarterly, Kinema, Flickhead, and North Dakota Quarterly since 2006. His poetry and fiction have appeared in various literary magazines, including Antenna, Aero-Sun Times, Bogus Review, Pen-Dec Press, Both Sides Now, Cross Cultural Communications/Bridging The Waters Volume II, and The Mascara Literary Review. Dramatika Press published a volume of his one-act plays in 1983. One of these, The Seeker, appeared in an issue of Collages & Bricolages.
