“The Hartford Anthology 1-5” by Kenneth DiMaggio

Poems by Kenneth DiMaggio

The Hartford Anthology 1-5

#1 Warning: Bad man up ahead

16-or-17-year-old girl unaware of a premature life crash

Ten years later it becomes a riveting story in my creative writing class

Too many such stories like the one from an Olympic- bound gymnast now fulltime student at community college while working as a certified nursing assistant

Yet upon one line in a story or poem written in an illegally smoked cigarette breakroom

the past balances long enough with the present to sculpt a future in poise and harmony

Wreckage which the writer can now leave

Healing in a tomorrow without cigarettes but with notebook secretly written between patients’ feedings and mandated employee meetings *

#2 Nurses not writers --is to what most of my gifted creative writing students aspire

Boyfriends who stole their years meant for university

Men whose long-ago handcuffed hands still punch the memories of women who rush children to pre-school and then themselves to community college

A street in The Bronx that after Milagros wrote about it will always be a trigger ready to fire against cops strangers God

A Pennsylvania sky some of whose stars will be the lost methamphetamine teeth of Keri’s brothers and sisters

A housing project in Hartford where dogs still hauntingly howl from and which Chanelle was not supposed to hear when she was a child

Poems & stories stolen between a supervised clinical and before it’s time to hug-swoop up the little one from childcare

Would-be nurses who should be writers

Or perhaps writers who can learn from soon-to-be nurses *

#3 Ramen noodles and all the lethal things you can make out of toilet paper like a blackjack to assault the guards or a noose to hang yourself or your cellmate

Don Quixote War and Peace and any books by Donald Goines or Iceberg Slim helped them escape while they were still numbers to the state

Rebuilding cars Having beers with the men in the backyard and reconnecting or trying with a son or daughter wary of their fathers --is what these former inmates wrote about in my community college creative writing class

Hector Darnell & Vernon --they all disappeared before the end of the semester

but wrote long enough to write about fixing up an old Ford or celebrating their daughter’s birthday for me to give them yet another incomplete in their lives *

#4 Because she worked & schooled nights he Mom’d their daughter during the day

And that’s why in my community college creative writing class he wrote about Momland

--where the first thing the mothers did when you took your child to the playground was look at your shoes and then for any milk on your child’s lips

Who was the best pitcher or quarterback did not matter as much as the mother who thought she was better than everyone else or as soon as her back was turned: “Who does that bitch think she is?”

Spills messes and if you spoil ‘em now you’re in for a life of regret later on

And with the exception of always one arrogant player

No team ever worked better than the mothers at the playground

Fresh Ink 2022 #5 “prison pregnancy poverty,”

--was the mantra in her poem about a city that pulled up in illegal street racing cars for girls with too tight spandex and saucer wide-fake gold ear hoops to hop into as housing project princesses and then hobble out of as pregnant high school dropouts married to 10-year stretches for grand theft auto they have to visit each month in the pen

if she disappeared for most of my creative writing class at the cinder block community college that recently put bars on the windows to discourage break-ins

she came back lean mean-jawed and with this poem refrained with a mantra slated to imprison girls like her

she came back ready to be the author of her own life

and win the fight *