We’ve published David’s Appassionata poems before. I asked him, finally, to explain who Sister Appassionata is. “She’s an individual, a voice, a cluster of attitudes and approaches to life and time,” he writes. “She ranges freely over most fields of knowledge and ignorance. Her distinguishing feature is that she believes, without qualification, in absolutely everything.”
— Ed.
Sister Mary Appassionata Lectures The Theology Class On The Resourcefulness Of Demons When it’s time for study they hang on my eyelids, remind me of Chablis’ sweet French kiss, make the window a shade too enthralling. They take up residence under the tongue, and when I most need to be an inspiration I’m made to stutter, hem and haw. One sits between my legs, and when I’m in the middle of abstinence and beauty strides into the room on muscled thighs, imposing itself between decades of the rosary, makes outrageous demands, upsetting the fragile balance I’ve struggled to erect. In the library they turn pages dark with the laughter of lark and jay, tittering of children in the garden that’s summer, bark and whine of distant dogs. Much as we do, a demon’s what we leave undone. Far as we go, a demon lies an inch beyond, taunting. I know where they’ve been by the wrinkles and creases of a hot night’s sleep, by what’s left in the bathwater when I rise steaming and clean. Sister Mary Appassionata Lectures The Science Class: Fossils, Physics, Apple, Heart Fossil bones, splintered bits of pelvis, jawbone, tooth and skull aren’t of early apes and men but of fallen angels made by greed too gross to fly, who shattered when they hit the ground. We know from physics every clock winds down, each woman and man lies down one more time than necessary for sleep or love. Every moment culminates in stone, each light and life in the ocean of night. Drowned bodies, drunkards, heroes, saviors surface always on the third day. Virgin wool cures the deepest ache or burn. Girls with big breasts and too much heart won’t fit into heaven. The boy who can unclasp a girl’s brassiere with one hand knows too much for his own good and all his life will have his hands full, his mouth open at the wrong time. The key to happiness? Knowing every second of the day what to do with the hands, when to loose or hold the tongue. The holiest creatures are those that fly. God Himself’s part falcon, cuckoo, pelican, dove. The girl who indulges herself by climbing spiked fences, riding a horse with too much passion, stooping too often to pick mushroom or orchid or dreaming of lovers who feel as she does will from the wedding night on be too easy on her husband. Man’s the only animal dumb enough to try to cry back the dead, take another’s life only out of spite, give his life for love. Those whose eyebrows meet can never be trusted. Women named Agnes always go mad. No hunger justifies eating an apple without first bringing it to life by breathing on it, filling it with beauty by rubbing it across the heart.
These poems are from David Citino’s The Appassionata Poems, published last year by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center ($4.50, postpaid, from the Center, Rhodes Tower 1834, Euclid Avenue at East 24th Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44115).
