Ben Nardolilli

Published: October 16th, 2014

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Ben Nardolilli currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, THEMA, Pear Noir, The Minetta Review, and Yes Poetry. He has a chapbook Common Symptoms of an Enduring Chill Explained, from Folded Word Press. He blogs at  and is looking to publish a novel.

An Immediate Term of Anxiety

They are having warehouse parties
In Brooklyn, the city
That is not quite a city
Where all the adults
Who are not quite adults live,
And that is why they can scrape
Together a life from gutter
To subway station,
So that they may partake
In the release parties of unopened
Literary magazines
Along with other members
Of the literary unread,
Here they can alternate
Between worries,
The origin of their next Panini,
Or how many gears
The next bike will need to carry
Deliveries of Christmas lights in July.

Midtown Time to Kill

Carrying a suitcase in Manhattan,
You are immediately suspect,
Though you are also admired,
People think you have a destination,
A place to go and work,
Or else exchange large sums.

Dragging a suitcase in Manhattan
Is another matter,
You become a persona non grata
And a whole host of other
Latin maladies are attached to you,
Along with the looks of the police,

Whether they think you are homeless
Or a terrorist ready to strike,
You are suspicious to them,
Libraries and lobbies are off limits,
And there will be an impenetrable
Justification awaiting you.

The Death of the Drone Operator

I fell asleep at a teenage console and woke up
An emulator of the terminal
In a chilled, odorless room below ground,
My hands gone from one joystick to another,
The pay was good, the hours terrible,
Thrown into a derivative economy
It was the best I could hope to do,
No strafe to worry about, no travel abroad,
I had the envy of all who loved to pilot
Pixilated aircraft on simulated planes,
The aiming was easy, the explosions fun,
It was sifting through the aftermath
For the damages desired or collateral
That made me press the eject button on it all,
I had to use the wonders of technology
To delve through the efficient surveillance
In search of a firm confirmation
That it was the right foe whose corpse
Was charred on the ground,
And not a child holding the reins
To a goat slowly bleeding to death by a rock,
The other operators never winced
From the sight of burned skin and bone,
Their eyes annexed to their sets
Except when breaking for a brief bite on the side,
They took comfort in the glow of the screen,
At times it seemed they went weeks
Without blinking once on the job,
When all I could do was to try and close my eyes,
Hoping someone else could direct
Me as I directed the destruction from above.

The Ductus Flows

There are plenty of variations on punctuation,
It helps, sometimes I need to express
Excitement to others, though it happens rarely,
Most of the time I just have questions,
And I have to put a pause in between
Each and every clause in my investigation.

The words remain unchanged, no spelling
Can increase or decrease interest,
And no new syntax can really capture a feeling,
At least not in English, if other tongues
Speak about trembling without marks,
Then I do not know how any of them do it.

The symbols we have may begin to change,
To multiply and capture new subtleties
And flavors of emotions that people experience,
Abbreviations do it now, a single lol
Tells the world one is indeed laughing out loud,
One day, those three letters might become one sign.

Ruination Day

I need Asian egg donors,
A new TV pilot
And a pilot for my yacht,
Ex-inmates of the Westchester
County jail to interview,
Along with dog walkers, also
Who can drive to collect gas prices?
I need a janitor too,
With a hundred more waiting
For a focus group
I am throwing on bread,
What do janitors think about it?
If you do not eat any grains,
We have openings to study
Your opinions on eggs as well.