Peter Dellolio

The Spider Webs

the spider webs

flexed and rippled

like rows of little

white waves

it was the haunted

Superman lunch box

and miasmic puppet

went on a hunger

strike for the express

purpose of stripping hat fat

off of the granite

totem pole

are you insane?

there weren’t any vacuum

nodules on the underside

of

The Monster That

Challenged the World

I suppose Tim Holt

had an excuse to get

chubby

that is, there weren’t any cowboys

around, either

to poke fun at him,

you know?

We Slowly and Quietly Floated

we slowly and quietly floated

past a cluster of pale blue

wooden tables and

orange test tubes

and

powdery pink sledge hammers and

fire-engine red hammocks

and then Spencer Tracy

used karate to beat up

Ernest Borgnine in that

great scene from

Bad Day at Black Rock

and

we drifted towards

maroon diving boards

and turquoise

chef hats and

green black

boards and yellow

limousines

with bakelite

steering wheels

limestone hub caps

walnut windshields

and

magnesium mufflers

The Shades on the Windows

the shades on the

windows

were those black and gray

test screens from

the 50s and 60s

with the profile of

the American Indian

everyone at the party had

clubfoot

no, I mean

accordions for feet

stale chop meat ankles

musical flesh

oboe ventricle

obligations of nautical sour

what a dream

facsimile of

pewter rental an

infection not to be

confused

with

confessions of a

twisted pumpkin taken to

the scary old house

tortured

until

Tonsil Tommy said

“Tinsel Tessie Tessler

gives it away on Christmas

Eve!”

Guillotine Pimples

guillotine pimples

tried, but you gotta

get there by yourself,

Mack, nobody can

fix the rackets like

they used to in Stromboli

and if they throw red

white and blue stones at

Ingrid while she’s

Viaggio in Italia

then all those morte

yachts can go to rust

in dreamy and dust some

mean tea while you’re at it

Peter Dellolio was born 1956 New York City. Went to Nazareth High School and New York University. Graduated 1978: BA Cinema Studies; BFA Film Production. Wrote and directed various short films, including James Joyce’s short story Counterparts which he adapted into a screenplay. Counterparts was screened at national and international film festivals. A freelance writer, Peter has published many 250-1000 word articles on the arts, film, dance, sculpture, architecture, and culture, as well as fiction, poetry, one-act plays, and critical essays on art, film, and photography. Poetry collections “A Box Of Crazy Toys” published 2018 by Xenos Books/Chelsea Editions and “Bloodstream Is An Illusion Of Rubies Counting Fireplaces” published February 2023 by Cyberwit/Rochak Publishing. He is working on a critical study of Alfred Hitchcock, Hitchcock’s Cinematic World: Shocks of Perception and the Collapse of the Rational. Chapter excerpts have appeared in The Midwest Quarterly, Literature/Film Quarterly, Kinema, Flickhead, and North Dakota Quarterly since 2006. His poetry and fiction have appeared in various literary magazines, including Antenna, Aero-Sun Times, Bogus Review, Pen-Dec Press, Both Sides Now, Cross Cultural Communications/Bridging The Waters Volume II, and The Mascara Literary Review. Dramatika Press published a volume of his one-act plays in 1983. One of these, The Seeker, appeared in an issue of Collages & Bricolages.