Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Jon Riccio and the Disco Incredible Hulk, the Bed of Nails Hammock, and Seraphim Science


Pan- Variations Featuring Carter-Era Mutant



“Dr. David Banner: physician, scientist; searching for a way to tap into the

  hidden strengths that all humans have.” – The Incredible Hulk



There’s a disco version of The Incredible Hulk 

putting a piano together from sawdust. 



Its harmony leads to window gazing and 

the panoply of children sired by neighbor 



whose passenger side has a broken sun visor, 

so I place pancetta and a roll of duct tape 



on his doorstep like the deadpan Samaritan 

advised. Faith, your backup panoramic 



sparing the 1/3 peace sign of my 

gluteal crack carousing loose pants



because we’re a surge from Easter 

metaphor pandering to Judas virus. 



Pandemonium, the gamma rays essential 

to David Banner’s crisis, tabloid 



panic tangential to ‘Hulking out,’

Lou Ferrigno’s makeup seat 


panoptical with swivel. Adrenalized, 

a Eucharist bench presses a city block. 



Pantone couture? Sewing-machine grey. 

Pandemic-on-newsprint, a testament worse. 





Distortion Aphrodite 

 

Circus and ficus, the horticulturist trapezing

that embroidery trick because the bed-of-nails

overnighter wanted a hammock, not homecoming.

 

Sideshow journals were hanging on a social-

media comeback: Carniveil and Gaff Quarterly

 

stage-hands cleaning tightrope perspiration.

Who wouldn’t be a stilt of nerves on highwires

that stretch from there to equilibrium when

 

lifeline and paycheck depend on sensitivity

of feet? Christ, the ankle variables! Then

 

you have the barker’s pyrite shouted

into microphone: juggler gospels and

machete physics that break their promises 



when crowds peer too closely. We’ve run 

out of elan. The fire eater lab-bound or tent,



the dung records a peanut-allergy elephant 

breaks. Flowers to photoshoot, Aphrodite 

wobbles the conch between make-believes.




Malaria and Christ Helmet



My Grandpa Floyd’s combat stories included a bullet- 

dinged helmet because Catholicism had his survival

down to a seraphim science. Nicknamed Doc based 

on the telephone repair kit he carried, his last days 

walkie-talkie sized.

 

         The funeral luncheon fed us 

a buffet of spaghetti in ceramic bowls better suited 

to the pomodoro elbows my father made two nights 

a week. 



             Half the family got his name wrong. 

Punishment for my parents’ quickie California 

marriage three months pregnant—an Eastern 

European to a hairdresser Italian. 



Did Floyd ever move him like a chess 

piece into son-in-law tense? 



Maybe your grandfather had worse war 

wounds than malaria and Christ helmet, 

house emptied of mementos prior 

to the estate sale. 



                            My one request, 

a globe with calendar numbers wed 

to Australia, the stakes life and cocktail 

sauce spilled on obituary draft.    


Jon Riccio received his PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers. His chapbook, Eye, Romanov, is forthcoming from SurVision Books, and his full-length, Agoreography, will be published by 3: A Taos Press.