50+ Lifestyles

Max’s Musings

By Max Molleston

Salvatore “Sal’ Marici, retired as a specialist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has been engaged in a poetry “fast track.” We are focused this month with his recent launch of eighty-three poems within the titled Fermentations. His
writing and promotion activity shows credit earned by Ice Cube Press, offering guidance in all matters of his publications from offices in North Liberty, Iowa. Sal Marici works into suprises from content and strategy he chooses to set the pace of his poetic messages. Seldom a second or third reading to get the story or thought within. Most of us have been a part, or know about the following scene(s). It is fun to imagine but not to have been involved.

Drive Thru

  Patrons wedge fries

between plump thighs

push a quarter

of a half pounder

in stretched mouths.

Secret sauce splatters

shirts, blouses, pants.

Twisting steering wheels trigger

Forces throw plastic lids.

After we grin about situations of this order (no pun intended) it may seem easier to figure how the poet gets a plan and why there is an urge to “put it down.’  Few of the  Marici (Mar E See) poems work as commonplace as this next one.

Lost Lineage

We put foods

laced , injected

with fake flavors

in microwaves

press buttons

wait for dings.

             

Then eat at tables

covered with

plastic bags

smart phones

with open apps

where no aromas of

roasting meats,

simmering sauces

 rouse taste buds.

Where nobody sits

around tables tell tales.

I hear Sal’s voice as he tells this story of “not like it was.” I am one person who has known of his skills and his desire for decades, and I am proud of his accomplished poetry.

You’d tend to think, on the basis of the above poetry that Sal Marici is a one pony act. Not true. They are mostly situations he has been close to. Situations he knows, and so do we. The language connects with us, which is the goal for all good/better/best poets I know or have read.

A final choice of this writer from Sal.

SUPPOSE

On a sunny Sunday

your foot falls

into woodchuck hole.

The rodent claws skin

between two straps

on your sandal,

drags you. Dust

you slide,

clogs your lungs.

Above brown-eyed susan and goldenrod

drop seeds. Rain soaks their coats,    

swells embryos. Stems burst.

Roots tie knots

so tight

no one finds

the opening.

Some Sci-Fi to close this book “look” of Sal Marici’s latest collection of poems, eighty-three of them in a volume titled Fermentations.

Remembering languages of residents, Indian tribes and nations, join me next month.