Wild Dreams: The Best of Italian Americana

The Cellar Twenty Years Later

106 the cellar twenty years later The Cellar Twenty Years Later W. S. Di Piero (1997) The twelve goofed wooden steps even now try to shrug me off, as I duck under the lintel, the cockeyed timber, where years ago we nailed the yellow horseshoe’s horns, tips down, to beat bad luck. That’s how we gave the Devil back his own smart gilded work. I must have passed beneath this sign a hundred times, baffled in the force stretched tight between rooms upstairs and dark-shining zones below. Hugging the wall, I can feel the coal trap snap and shutter wide, then flint-streams flashing light half left outside cheered down the chute into the bin. I stood aslant myself, neatly pitching off the stairs into the phaseless dark. But the horseshoe did its work, holding me in place, saved me from the fall into merely real mineral gravity. It also fixed me in this middle range, homeless, off balance, listening to odd faint sounds above my head. Copyright 1989 by W.S. DiPiero and published by the University of Massachusetts Press from The Dog Star. ...