~ Delta Poetry Review ~

William Bonfiglio

Reception (Grandpa's Basement)

New York license plates

wallpapering pine beams;

celestial crackings

in founding grey cement;

cheap cream soda in plastic bottles

flanked by stewed tomatoes sealed in tin;

a doorway, plastic and poorly insulated,

opening at the foot of the hill;

a stairway, wooden

and impossibly smooth,

rising to its cordon,

a child’s safety gate

installed specially for today;

At his work table,

colored glass and graphite dust,

metal filings and wire clippers,

pincers, pliers, sawhorses, vices;

and his pieces:

Christmas wreaths

with cranberry rubies;

fire trucks with turning wheels;

skiers with pearled poofball hats;

my name in block capitals;

hanging lamp shades of claret flowers

that trembled as a younger cousin

galloped through the hallway above.

And that perfume,

of sawdust layered over dry air

somehow cool and native—

it was fading beneath the bold tang of marinara

that drifted down from the kitchen,

a meal for family returned home

one last time.

If it were possible through labor

to preserve the smell of that basement,

I would have snapped my tendons

working to do so.

William Bonfiglio is a PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick. His poetry has been awarded a Pearl Hogrefe Grant in Creative Writing Recognition Award, the Julia Fonville Smithson Memorial Prize, and has appeared in American Journal of Poetry, New Letters, PRISM international, and elsewhere.