Kathleen Hellen

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what the mob taught me


Come over here, kid, Clemenza says. Learn something, A little oil. You fry some garlic.
Then paste. Tomatoes (… make sure it doesn’t stick.).

I should’ve paid attention to the order
of things. Should’ve let him say he loved me,
more than I loved him.

Should’ve kept my guard up, like gangsters packing heat.
Should’ve kept my box of sweet cannoli on the seat.

I thought about revenge.
How it simmers.
How you feed it like you feed 20 men.

The first one always sticks.
I should have twirled him like you twirl
spaghetti on a spoon,
so as not to make a mess of things.

weather report

fetishizing particles. aubade abiding. the sun hailing fiercely over gotϋgo. the nearly early loads of humpty dumpster clinging to the broken king-sized pieces. deaf cyclones where cerberi are chained to monkey-minds linked to bad conclusions. to melodies about the buddha. whether aum or ohm or omega. ending in a taillight in the skylight that’s just breaking on the sunshine of your life. who came softly from the bathroom window? ra-ra-ra-ing? soul kissed by blister? sole hot to trot or leather? interjecting orange-yellow? who dialed up rotaries of flowers? hazy. partly
cloudy.

dear job

chirpchirp car unlocks.
clickclock heel
to engine-started startling fox
-y slink into the sing-sing
birds forgotten on the off-
ramp coffee-troubled. car
snarls at snarling cars. c-
lotted. up five floors to
popups powerpointed.
pluses. minuses.
day prolongs. long-
ing.

Kathleen Hellen’s debut collection Umberto’s Night won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. She is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, Meet Me at the Bottom, and two chapbooks.

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