David Citino
Poems: Middle Linebacker and Volare
David Citino (March 13, 1947 - October 17, 2005)
Author, professor, and poet laureate for The Ohio State University, David Citino taught English and creative writing for more than 30 years, the first 11 years at OSU - Marion. He was the author of 14 books of poetry and also contributed poems to more than 200 magazines and anthologies. We are honored to post four poems by David Citino. The first two were published in 43302.org on April 26, 2022. Two more are published here. Thank you, Mary Citino, for your guidance and for allowing us to share these poems.
Middle Linebacker
Following instructions willed me
by my big-bellied gray teachers,
I keep my shoulders parallel
to the yard lines. I won’t move
before you do, so I’m aways
a step behind, but I’m a wizard
of angles. Sudden change sickens me,
and pain ends only when confusion
does, when we hide in the impact
as if it were a forest, lie together
in chalk and clipped grass.
My hands are nets, my arms
oak and ash, wound like a mummy’s.
Through holes in my skull voices harsh
as stones chant, cry out in numbers
and prediction, pleas for help.
Later tonight, fear forgotten
or tinged with the myth time makes
of things that don’t quite measure up,
our laughter will flow around the table.
Now, those here with me are lost,
gather around like calves, ache
for a future. I’m no seer.
I’ve been so wrong before
my bones have rattled, lungs
have groaned like thunder. But once
you’ve decided and your courage
and momentum meet just outside your body
I’ll be there crouching in your way,
brushing aside your friends as if
they were twigs.
I’ll pound you into the ground
like a stake.
Volare
(Note: The poem, Volare, was a favorite at poetry readings. David sang the lines that are set in italic.)
Just as lights inside our living room
and steam from water boiling on the stove
erase Cleveland from the picture window,
father comes in,
stands in the kitchen, one shoulder thrust forward,
feet apart the way he’s seen Lanza stand,
eyelids drooping like Dean Martin’s or Como’s,
Lucky Strike stuck to lower lip.
We can leave the confusion
And all the disillusion behind.
And we know he got the raise,
His laborer’s share of chemical company profits
From the Manhattan Project
and the revolution in plastics.
Four hundred a year. And that’s not hay.
He grabs my mother
and spins with her before the stove,
wooden spoon brandished like the fine lady’s fan
she saw that day in the pages of Life.
Just like birds of a feather
a rainbow together we’ll find.
Then he comes for me,
and I’m soaring above cauldrons
of rigatoni and sauce bubbling bright
as the scarlet cassocks altar boys wear
at Christmas and Easter.
He brings me back to earth
and twirls away to phone his mother.
That night when he comes home from moonlighting
in the credit department at Sears,
feet heavy as bricks,
he’ll come to my bedroom and tell me again
how there’ll be no promotion for him
because he couldn’t go to college
but still he’s risen higher than his father
who put in fifty years with the B & O.
He’ll step out the door
and for a moment his head will be caught in light
like some raptured hoary saint drunk on love
in the window of Ascension of Our Lord
and the last thing I’ll hear
will be his lovely forlorn baritone
fading, falling into stillness.
Volare. Wo-wo. Cantare. Wo-o-o-o
NOTES
“Middle Linebacker” was published in Last Rites and Other Poems (1980).
“Volare” was published in The Gift of Fire (1986).
Memorial for David Citino October 23, 2005
At the close of the memorial, one of David’s sons [Nathan] cited a few lines from one of his father’s poems, Volare. In that poem, there is a bit of singing, with the words: Volare, Wo-wo. Cantare, Wo-o-o-o.
At the end of his speech, David’s son sang out these last lines, over and over. He walked away from the podium and let his voice carry out over the auditorium. The audience was reserved at first, and it took maybe three or four passes of the song before people started to join in. But he kept singing, and kept waving at the audience to join in.
Eventually, the entire room was singing out Volare, Wo-wo. Cantare, Wo-o-o-o, over and over, softly and reverently. And his son walked away from the stage, and that’s how the service ended – everyone singing quietly, together. It was quite a fitting (and moving) way to end the ceremony.
- Felix Jung (Blog)
