Dan Sicoli

  lupini

  my father would soak lupini beans
  in the cellar laundry basin for days
  and once ready
 
  i'd find him with a bowlful
  resting on his chest
  as he laid back on
  the basement recliner
  watching the ballgame
 
  he'd split the shell
  and pop them
  into his mouth like grapes
  as if he were eating his own sins

	years later i surmised
	at his funeral that
	the bean ritual
	was more about chasing
	the ghost of his father
		the man who taught him how
		to prepare them
	than the sweet bitterness the
	pleasure offered

  a second bowl always lay
  beneath him on the floor
  full of empty shells
  of the baptized beans
  that temporarily housed
  my grandfather's spirit

 

there's no such thing as a green hornet

in our black masks and black gloves
we became kato and the green hornet
on ten speeds with fantasies
large as a politician's plan for
the neglected blocks of urban renewal

we rode our schwinns through
the one glorious summer
of forever streets and forever moments
searching for villains to bust
before peach fuzz turned to
stubble and thoughts colorized
the opposite sex and we

grew dumb enough to
to become experts on everything
as our underage heads swelled
into a kaleidoscope
of our own stupidity
lighting up cigarettes and loose joints
and dropping speed or snorting powder or
guzzling pints of mad dog 20/20

our wallets ringed with
years-old condoms and we pushed the limits
of our own well-being
during that brief dry-humping spell when
bravado was a king
unleashing an alcoholic haze of virtual
carefree ignorance that fueled car rides
lacking direction

with pool hall attitudes backed
by cocky grins and lizard brains
too engrossed with concepts of manhood
that would remain elusive
as any future of responsibilities

that short summer
pedaling through those streets pretending
to karate chop criminals with all the
innocent goodness ephemerally installed
and instilled from mothers' hearts
before tossing our childish masks which
could no longer conceal our grade school charm
or keep us from joining
that raucous teenage empirical parade

 

Dan Sicoli lives between two Great Lakes in New York State where he co-edits Slipstream. He will have a new poetry collection, his third, out from Ethel Press in 2026. On weekends he beats on an old Gibson in a local garage rock band.