David Citino
Two Poems
David Citino (March 13, 1947 - October 17, 2005)
Author, professor, and poet laureate for Ohio State University, David Citino taught English and creative writing for more than 30 years; the first 11 years at OSU - Marion. He was the author of 14 books of poetry and contributed poems to more than 200 magazines and anthologies.
We are posting two of David Citino’s poems here. Two additional poems will follow in a separate article. These four poems are published with the kind permission of Mary Citino.
Basic Writing, Marion Correctional
I come each day through fields
furrowed with corn, bean and barbed wire
overseen by moonlighting farmers
perched in watchtowers, cheeks pink,
shotguns cocked to cultivate their order.
In the Visitors’ Lounge the women
wait, weary from the bus ride
from Cleveland or Toledo, skirts slit
over best hose over legs new-shaven,
lips forcing smiles cold
as institutional porcelain.
In the corner a couple entwines
his leg between hers, his hands
working beneath her blouse,
their children trying not to see.
The guard who frisks me jokes the same
each day: You got anything in there
but poems Doc? I walk past The Hole
and see men come out, eyes wild
with crazy static. In the Job Readiness Room
they’re all in jeans and work shirts
like my English-major classmates
at Ohio U in 1969. All chain smoke
but the Muslims. They want to know
about my wife. What color hair?
She make you happy? You got a picture?
I tell them about comma faults.
Delivery-van doors slam gunshot-loud outside,
jerk them from their seats.
The loudspeaker thunders above my words:
C Block, Chow. Work Call: Yard Gang,
Shop Gang, Laundry Gang, Sanitation Gang.
It was coke, speed, horse
that put us here, they write, bad crowds
we ran with, bad men that hustled
our mothers. The Man who jerked us around.
I help them with their letters.
Oh my precious lady I ache
for the righteous mysteries of your thighs.
Dear Honey I got something I been saving up
for you. Dear Most Gracious Ladies and Gentlemen
of the Parole Board: I’ve changed my life.
With their pencils they want to shake
the Governor. I’m magic as a preacher,
they believe, because of words,
because each night I sleep beside a woman
and each day I’ve leave to touch
a son’s cheeks soft as petals
of a courtyard rose rising beyond
shadows of all four walls.
They yearn to soar above cinder blocks
of each lethal year, hearts constricting
in barred cells of the breast,
hands into fists. This makes nothing
better, all admit. We’re waiting
for the bell, summons from a purer world.
Times the law, the hell men do.
Proverbs
A loose woman’s a bottomless pit
the deceiving man’s
a ladder with a broken rung.
The beauty of a young man
lies between his legs, an old man’s
behind his eyes, between his lips.
Hands can’t hold or carry water
when they’re fists.
A woman and man can’t be driven apart
when their hands hold fast to one another,
when what they make of love
has two backs, eight limbs, one pulse,
when they move together to the same music.
Four things can’t last forever:
a storm, a peaceful sky, a life, a love.
He who gives himself to love’s
a tilled field in early spring;
who holds his neighbor in contempt’s
a teeming city after dark.
As cold air to a broken tooth,
as a chancre to a lover,
so’s death’s grin to one who has no memories
of steamy nights in automobiles
in woods or near the sea, soft beds
in rooms fragrant and dim with late afternoon,
whispers urgent in the ear, of being called
from sleep by dawn’s insistent touch to rise
only to love, only to live again
Bibliography
Basic Writing, Marion Correctional was published in “The House of Memory” (1990) Proverbs was published in “Last Rites and Other Poems” (1980)
Notes
After their release from Marion Correctional Institution, many former inmates sought out David Citino to express gratitude for his encouragement and give-and-take discussions.
In the classroom David noted: “Everybody reads everything out loud. You try to fill the room with the words of all the poets, those of the class, those from the textbook, the so-called great poets from all time. Get those words out. Get them bouncing around the room.”
On being a poet “So, I fancy myself only this: an Italian American religious poet, scented with garlic and incense, festooned with Buckeyes, limping and brandishing a cane. Some would add “academic” to that fat label. I hope not too many would. For some reason, I’m much more comfortable in blue collars than in white, and the sleeves of my jacket have no patches.”
