The Insides of a Poem By Manny Grimaldi

after Joseph Ceravolo

I needed your beauty

to create a poem about you,

but you said the loveliness was mine,

not yours.

Grandmother laughs,

flow tears trace her furrowed

cheeks, gardens of mirth

densely grown, young boy another ode?

another song? Stop to think—

just in case you both are wrong?

I’ll share this with you

when it is time to say, everything goes

so well, so very well in my mind.

I’ve proven sentimental—

leapt to love, my cheeks a blush vermillion

a million embarrassments on my heels.

I require your art

to create another poem about you—

perhaps a perfect and closer rendering.

Lines broken, stating clearly

something simple—very near

to your country’s shores, 

or your wistful eye 

and a sudden cache of photos

topical and tropical, rainy and dreaming

away to slow marimbas 

and storms before sunshine, 

rainbows, and rain again. 

Manny Grimaldi is a father of two beautiful children that receive letters in the mail from him when he isn’t with them, and a Kentucky poet. He is the author of the full length poetry collection Riding Shotgun with the Mothman, and chapbook ex libris Ioannes Cerva (anonymus scriptus). During the year he also serves as managing editor for Lexington, Kentucky’s Yearling Poetry Journal under Workhorse Writers.