Joseph Cuomo

Two poems from Joseph Cuomo’s What I Didn’t See

followed by a note on the author

Vowel

I’m here now can hear him shouting
seething cursing into the phone the
rage of Achilles unleashed on a reticent

priest he will not let go will eat drink
inhale the fever the bile the spasm
twisting his thick body around wrenched

cork uncorked abrupt what is inside raining
out don’t tell me don’t you tell me you
think I don’t see things you think I don’t

know you think I’m a fucking asshole I
know believe me I know I know my
kids would be sitting in that goddamn

school right now if my name didn’t end in a
vowel there it is the secret the mystery the
source I see my small self helpless perplexed

the shock the conflict the clash of
absolutes the unquestioned authority
of my father of the Church the priest

unforgivable and yet he forgave us forgiving
all our sins now I see what I didn’t
then like a god I take on my father’s form

animate him sense each muscle his mine
tense churning of the blood bilious
liver hammer of the lung inhabiting

his skin his shame his anger
true as bone I can feel it
devour him when trying to buy

a home they weren’t gonna sell to
someone like me someone with a
name that ends in a vowel I sit inside

his soul and see what there is of him in
me his fire his fury the indignity no less
tenacious than mine during the War they

had me stationed in Tennessee before we got
shipped over and the sheriffs in this
frigging town they threw me in jail the

bastards worst jail I ever seen didn’t even have
no toilet just this trough like horses
drink out of running through the cells of course

I was bombed we all were we
knew where we were
headed but that ain’t why they

arrested me you wanna know
why you wanna know for dating
a white girl

yes my father yes he had been
wronged the heat the lightning
genuine though he held it

too long poor man he couldn’t
unknot his pitiless heart could
not calm his own storm it bent

blinded swallowed him a war he
couldn’t win his war the war
within a match inflamed possessed

undid him undid those he
loved wronged cut us now I
see the hit the burn the hurt

to him us me differently no longer
alien to the horror the hurt to
others before others since others

to come I can see a through
line a link a bridge between us
so many of us a bond among the

dead the living the not yet born
so many of us shadows to the
world shadows to ourselves so

many estranged anomalous wretched
refuse cryptic difference the wretched
dream a Trojan horse why why do we

hate whoever is not
us even though of course they
are we yes we are our brothers keep

saying it we are our
sisters they all of them
are me they all of them

are gods.

 

Joseph Cuomo

 

Meeting

If you know for certain what is the purpose of
the universe…then…no degree of coercion is
too great, provided it leads to the goal.
— Bertrand Russell

around thirty you debate Jerry Falwell on TV
his face enlarged on the monitor
enormous big as Cyclops smiling courteous

to the camera yet duplicitous he talks
shit to you during the commercial tries
to fluster unnerve you then back live

he claims not to have said what he
did beats you in battle belittles you
foolish a nobody looking through

notes trying to cite his lies his
deceit Falwell sees but a sole
possibility the certainty of war

the dictate of the divine Armageddon
his joy tomorrow already written
knowable inevitable the way forward

indisputable the inerrant command of
the Bible all we can do is walk willingly
or unwillingly down the path history

reduced to this the power to predict
preempts all discussion all
argument disagreement now disloyalty

skepticism subversion fanaticism
infects the Oval Office then as it
will decades later Falwell separates

the righteous from the rest of us the
powerless the feminist the lesbian
the dark barbarian how do we survive

this how do we reason with the
unreasonable inflexible how defend
conciliation kindness empathy now I

see what you didn’t then we yes all
every one of us has tasted the whip
estrangement defeat gay trans Black

Brown odd foreign still our betters are
not better than us they deny their own
ignorance imperfection uncertainty

confuse belief with knowledge believe they
they alone see what no one can
the premise lone key the sole purpose for

the existence of humanity
conviction breeds confidence
however misplaced belligerence

lunacy intolerance the province of
those who know what they
don’t can’t can never know there is

no supremacy no hierarchy we who
stand up speak out we who love yes
love another more than ourselves

there is no panacea utopia no final
victory there is only this the
company of those who have gone

before us those who will follow
there is only the sense of doing
what we must the sense of each

of us hand in hand for all eternity.

 

Joseph Cuomo

 

Vowel and Meeting first appeared in Evergreen Review

Joseph Cuomo was born in Harlem and spent his early years in the south Bronx. His poems have appeared in the Boston Review and Evergreen Review. He’s debated Jerry Falwell on CNN, interviewed China’s most prominent dissident, Fang Lizhi, before the massacre in Tiananmen, and produced an award-winning public radio documentary on American fundamentalism, broadcast in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. For over forty years, he was Director of Queens College Evening Readings, a literary reading series he started in 1976. josephacuomo.com