The Day Begins When…

by Daniel Damiano

the bed is made,
            the shades are pulled up full mast,
                        the wind chimes are awakened
                                    by semi-conscious knuckles,
            the coffee is brewed,
the cat is fed,
            the birds on the fire escape have their seeds
and their iced-over water bowls
are doused with warmth,
            the showerhead spews
                        and the bathroom steams
and the coffee is sipped
            while the cat eats,
                        while the birds eat,
and the chimes have gone back
                                                to sleep.

Mother & Daughter on the R Train at 9:45pm on a Wednesday

They sit
side by side
blankly gazing
at the passing
stations
with the same
auburn eyes,
the same
pointed nose,
the same
chiseled cheekbones
and dimpled chin,
before the daughter
leans her
similarly oblong
head
against her mother’s
chest,
hears the same heartbeat,
then sits up
as their destination
approaches,
before they look at each other,
as if
by ritual;
the mother
seeing herself,
the daughter
seeing her mother.

Their Marriage Was a Pending Divorce

He would arrive
on occasion;
a cameo appearance
reminding us
that he still lived there;
even then I could tell
she was ignored,
as if we resided there in secret
to his other life.
There were no conversations
between them
that I can recall,
only exclamations,
and sometimes I looked
through the words
they spit at each other
and saw another child;
         a silhouette of myself,
with flailing limbs,
screaming for silence.

Signs of Aging

When
you begin to wonder
how old you were
when certain childhood
movies
came out,
or the embryonic
stage you were
at
during the Apollo 11
mission,
and if you were even a gleam
in anyone’s eye
when Armstrong
sauntered
onto the lunar surface
and stole Aldren’s
thunder.

BIO

Daniel Damiano is an Award-winning Playwright, Pushcart-nominated Poet, acclaimed Novelist and Actor based in Brooklyn, NY. He is the recent recipient of the 2024 David A. Einhorn Playwriting Prize, presented by Untitled Theater Company No. 61 in NYC. He has thus far published two books of poetry, 104 Days of the Pandemic (2021, fandango 4 Art House) and, most recently, The Concrete Jungle and the Surrounding Areas (2024, Bottlecap Press), along with three novels, The Woman in the Sun Hat (2021), Graphic Nature (2022) and, most recently, Advice from a Cat (2024), all from fandango 4 Art House. His acclaimed play Day of the Dog is published by Broadway Play Publishing. His poems have thus far been published in the MacGuffin, Four Tulips, Gyroscope Review, Philly Poetry Chapbook Review, Curlew Quarterly, Quagmire Magazine, Crooked Teeth Literary Magazine, Newtown Literary Journal, Cloudbank, New Voices Anthology and HotMetal Press.