Tag Archives: Trillium Award

Pino Coluccio, ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’

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My sweater-vests and cardigans,
my necessary junk,
my shower-curtain rings of course:
my life is in my trunk.

A framed glossy picture
of Marie, my better half,
but not her perfume (jasmine),
her cooking, or her laugh.

From New York to Chicago
and Chicago to New York,
the days are seldom sunny,
the nights are always dark.

Pretty soon I’ll have to pack it in,
I’m getting old.
There’s not a lot worth having
that a travel trunk can hold.

*****

Editor’s comments: From Pino Coluccio you should expect light and dark combined, light but deep, usually short, always well-phrased… and always existential. This poem is from Class Clown, which won a Trillium Award, putting Coluccio in the company of fellow Ontarians Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje and Alice Munro.

Pino Coluccio lives in Toronto.

Photo: “Travelling Trunk” by Bart Heird is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Pino Coluccio, ‘Class Clown’

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They’d all be like, never say never
in classes we had, but whatever.
I turned to the windows and hallways
that always said always say always.

*****

Editor’s comments: From Pino Coluccio you should expect light and dark combined, light but deep, usually short, always well-phrased… and always existential. This, the eponymous piece of his 2017 collection, is tucked away in the middle of the book. The book won a Trillium Award, putting Coluccio in the company of Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje and Alice Munro. He has given me permission to republish more of his pieces from Class Clown periodically.

Pino Coluccio lives in Toronto.

Pino Coluccio: ‘Where Has All The Mayo Gone?’

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Hungry late, I clank around
the kitchen for a snack.
A pickle first and then, why not,
I peel apart a pack

of luncheon meat, some Swiss, a leaf
of something limp and wan,
and now — oh no, the lid’s on tight
but look — the mayo’s gone.

It feels like only yesterday
I parked my father’s car,
peeked at other shoppers’ carts
and tootled to a jar

for slathering on hotdogs
and for dolloping on frites —
there’s loads of foods whose fatty goodness
mayonnaise completes.

My pumpernickel won’t go down —
it’s like a warning bell,
the chilly clink of stainless steel
on glass. I know it well.

And wonder under nibbles if
at bottom human lives
aren’t always scraping empty jars
with tips of pointless knives.

*****

This is another of Pino Coluccio’s favourite poems from his first collection ‘First Comes Love‘. He doesn’t choose to comment on it, but I too like it; I like the way it clanks around the kitchen for a couple of verses, and then hits you with existential despair in the last lines. Which might be a matter of personal taste: I like eating limes and lemons, and I find Coluccio’s reflections equally tasty.

Pino Coluccio won Canada’s 2018 Trillium Award for English Poetry with his second collection, ‘Class Clown’. His poem ‘City Sunsets’ is featured in the most recent Potcake Chapbook, ‘City! Oh City!‘ He lives in Toronto.

Photo: “It’s an empty jar #signage” by Stv. is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.