by Ben Nardolilli

Times Square, 1943. John Vachon. Office of War Information.

This rain, is it even
Rain? This rain is water
Hanging itself, precipitation
Suicide, a survey, a taste,
The perfume of the clouds,
This rain is not heavy,
Like gnats and flies,
Wet swarming, a dark
Bag of diamonds, a confusion
For the meteorologists,
What to call this weather,
What icon to slide it by,
What are the weatherpeople
Supposed to say? This rain unable
To even give Noah a slight case
Of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Millennials

We came out from under
Fifty years of winter,
Decades of frost that
Thawed only once we began
To grow up and take
Memory stock of the world,
A winter that hung lead curtains
Around everything, refused
To let our parents breathe,
So they yelled and screamed
Kicked up dirt around the border,
Made themselves warm
When the rest of the world refused to be,
Brought down walls and bayonets,
While dancing under stars of red and white.

We were born in the budding garden,
In the retreat of the old cement glaciers,
The grass was worn out
But did its best to look green
And our parents’ hands wove blossoms,
Strung the garlands around cushions
To make hyperactive flowers.
When the giants had gone to rest,
We were supposed to rise and play,
Run our fingers through the wheat
Now grown taller than ever, and roam
Freely over the continents, worrying
Little of boundaries and now enjoying
The collecting of mushrooms.

In time the temperature rose and the ice
Disappeared, we wished the winter
Would come back,
With its clear crisp lines,
Everything in black and white,
Now the world was covered in shades
Of yellow and green, sickly hues,
We escaped the heat under the shades of rocks
Where we lit our own explosions
And called it war, created heroism
From carvings of battle scenes,
Our parents still danced,
But there were no walls to fight,
We tried to build them,
There was too much land to see
And the horizon was too generous with us.

Ben Nardolilli is a twenty-four-year-old writer currently living in Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared in Houston Literary Review, Perigee Magazine, Canopic Jar, Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament, Baker’s Dozen, Thieves Jargon, Farmhouse Magazine, Elimae, Poems Niederngasse, Gold Dust, The Delmarva Review, Underground Voices Magazine, SoMa Literary Review, Heroin Love Songs, Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue, Cantaraville, and Perspectives Magazine. In addition he was the poetry editor for West 10th Magazine at NYU and maintains a blog at: mirrorsponge.blogspot.com