Published by The Puddin’head Press
Stapled Chapbook, 39 pages
5.5 x 8.5 inches, 2011
$6.00
Praise for Debris: Poems and Memoir
After reading her book Debris: Poems & Memoir, I realized that Elizabeth Marino is a writer whose depth and feeling is profoundly clear because she knows that a well-crafted poem will leave an indelible image on the canvas of the mind and heart. Her poems can live comfortably in the sacred halls of academia or by Augie’s gas station, east of Ashland. Her reality is powerfully stark, beautiful and graceful, like thunderbolts and roses. After knowing her work for over 20 years, I’ve concluded that Elizabeth Marino is not just a major writer but a hero – it’s my honor to know her. Gracias Elizabeth – I’m waiting for more! – David Hernandez, famous poet
Elizabeth Marino’s collection Debris is a road map of the heart, and an excavation through the layers of an individual’s and our society’s psyche. She claims the parts that can be saved, grieves
for what must be abandoned, and re-uses anything salvagable. “Touch bone, touch lock, touch floor. / It is time to sort this debris into refuse.” From Chicago to Paris, from Amsterdam to Puerto Rico, Marino never averts her gaze and creates poetry from both the “feathered parachute” and “the wall rimmed with broken glass.” She looks unflinchingly at what is lost in childhood trauma, which memories can be saved, and which become bonfires for our nightmares. Turning her gaze to the outside world, Marino is one of the few poets who dares to write about landmines, war and poverty, “the unpaid labor/of childrearing, eldercare, aiding/the… needy” while envisioning something better. Yet her cityscapes are so delicate you can hear a sparrow’s beating wings. Marino is a poet who urges us to “Open your eyes.” Debris is a collection that will be read and remembered. – Julie Parson-Nesbitt, poet/author of Finders
About Elizabeth Marino
Elizabeth Marino was born to a Puerto Rican couple in Chicago’s old Hyde Park barrio, and was raised in an Italian/German American family in the southwest Chicago suburbs, famed for musicians and gangsters. She holds an MA from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Writers Program and a BA from Barat College (with English literature and history at Oxford University). She works as an itinerant adjunct instructor of English. She is also an actor/director, working under her stage (and birth) name of “Micaela Mastierra”.
Her poetry has appeared in the anthologies Between the Heart and the Land/Entre el corezon y la tierra: Latina poets in the Midwest (Chicago: MARCH/Abrazo Press, 2001), Dark Waters Speaking (Chicago: La Onda Negra Press, forthcoming), Breaking Mirrors/Raw Images (4:30 Poets) and College Poetry Review, the magazines: Moon Journal, After Hours, Strong Coffee, Nit & Wit, Envisage (UK), the NAB Gallery Pamphlet Series, and she has appeared on the spoken word CD Elements of Life, Love & Action with the improve troupe She Laughs. She has published creative non-fiction, interviews, and articles in The Chicago Journal and S.H.E. She published her first poem at the age of fifteen in the Illinois English Bulletin.
Contents
I
‘Take the Socks Out of Your Bra and Be Patient’
East of Ashland
Walk-In Closets
Debris
My Father’s Last Harley
II
“Peace!”/Christmas Bombings ’72
Kew House
Rue de Huchette, March 1976
(Untitled)
Sunday Morning with Johann Sebastian
Performance Poet w/Daughter
Fire
May Day
The Use of Force
Independence Day on Vieques
III
At Nightmare Times, How Opalescent Her Eyes
A New Yorker Poem
Wildlife Refuge
Impossible Before Dante – An Impotence Poem
Foul Fern
Moving Skylines
Modern Romance
This One Frost
Through My Best Friend’s Window
Elephant Days
IV
I Look for You
To the Visitor
Ripe Peaches
You Turn On All the Lights
Body Language
V
The Days of Bobby’s Passing
Mutterliebe
Samples
MY FATHER’S LAST HARLEY
A yellow photo curls in my hand:
my dad,
leaning against his ’47 Harley
muscular arms across white T-shirt
brass Golden Gloves belt buckle
catches the sun
crossed ankles and sharp grey pants –
no trace of Interstate mud at 17
or Army drab – trousers nearly fit for
a married man.
I’d remembered him as always looking for his red truck.
His shadow, I’d walk endless used car lots with him
and witness his haggling with salesmen. Always, the
perfect red pickup would be just on the next lot,
further north or south on Western Avenue.
“Don’t you never volunteer for nothin’,” he’d say
Ex Cathedra, rising from in front of the TV
and shuffling off toward the bedroom; and I, at 16, would walk
all 30 miles of the Hunger Hike. After:
“That’s one tough kid I’ve got.”
He didn’t say much
when I left the South Side
for the North Shore – but that winter
when he saw Tevye wave
his eldest daughter off to to Siberian exile,
Mom said he cried in his popcorn.
EAST OF ASHLAND
There, just east of Ashland
with its potholes, busted Budweiser bottles,
rusted stop signs, and Augie’s two-pump gas station,
I lead the caravan of bicycles
down towards the docks of the Calumet-
Saginaw Canal. We stopped, and mapped out
other journeys for ourselves.
We named them angels – those bargemen
who waved and kept going.
We each kept one eye cocked,
meaning to leave Blue Island far behind.
We lived further west than Ashland,
almong the south bank of the Canal –
where our teacher said
you could still find Indian arrowheads –
but east of Gypsy Town and the trailer park
lit up like a dime store Bethlehem by Clark Refinery.
Cheryl headed out first, and went south –
Southern Illinois University – and I trailed her overland
to visit, no seats on an overbooked “City of New Orleans.”
Her college friends gathered, showed us
the rock formations of Granite City National Park
the white and green river town of Cape Girardeau.
Both of us really weren’t surprised by the sites;
we’d always known they’d be there
when we’d dreamed on the banks of the Cal-Sag Canal
down there, east of Ashland.
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