Extinction By Manny Grimaldi

I once sacrificed everything in the world for her, 

my sales cases filled with cold leads and racing magazines.

Ledgers a jumble of numbers drawn up the middle 

and edges burned—I’m as solid a failure 

at slinging vacuum cleaners as ice cubes bragging 

they could resist mint, bourbon, sugar and heat.

Not having a sale and needing one fluffs me up,

pulls my soles up through my shoes on to the back

of my teeth where I stop, a worrisome son of man.

I can’t talk my talk with her anymore—a clown fish 

in an anemone put off by the searching fingers inside 

her thoughts waving in the salt. She’s gone.

Now, I am a meaningless collection

of vinyl records to entice you near me for a night

of salacious boogie-butt screwing—the Grappelli, 

the Reinhardt, the Brubeck, the Davis, the Coltrane, 

the Mingus, Queen and the Tubes—but still I do better. 

I find stillness deep in a world made for love,

a field of swept roots and tubers and dewy lettuces.

It’s that I’m tired, talking about talking about talking 

about being a man. I feel like a ghost in need of security. 

Planting a bed. Burying. Slow the beat. Blues and roots 

fill me. Memories of pause.

Manny Grimaldi is a father of two beautiful children that receive letters in the mail from him when he isn’t with them, and a Kentucky poet. He is the author of the full length poetry collection Riding Shotgun with the Mothman, and chapbook ex libris Ioannes Cerva (anonymus scriptus). During the year he also serves as managing editor for Lexington, Kentucky’s Yearling Poetry Journal under Workhorse Writers.