Felice anno nuovo from the Porch, and a new book from Mendes Biondo

$12 / €10

152 pages

Please welcome the New Year with with a book of poems in Italian and English, bursting with spice and sprezzatura.

“I enjoyed this book like linguini with clams. Like a plump Italian beauty with her arms full of fragrant flowers sitting on my lap laughing. The book is full of romance and joy of life. I will just quote Mendes’ lines that stood tall for me: “salmon faces, bear arms, sexy dresses, weird wine, poisoned lips, a gypsy hearts, NEVER PREPARED ALWAYS READY, selling your ass, your asshole boss fires you, scratch your balls, explosions of the sun, Pretend to be the sun and the moon, take off that bra, get off those panties, come like a storm, a blizzard, love is slow jazz. Buy this book, Mendes Biondo is a force to be reckoned with.” —Catfish McDaris 7-23-2018
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“Italian is a romance language. Just look at it in the original of these poems, and in the English translations as well. In Mendes Biondo’s use of language, it’s lyrical, lusty, luxuriant and fecund. And that’s just the English. The visual beauty of the Italian version to even a monoglot is thrilling and musical in Biondo’s rolling, cascading exuberance. Read aloud it’s a trip in itself. Aahh, but the English version takes the reader through sense-rattling sexcapades, elegies, howls, funky hells, tornadoes of vibes, a whore named Death, even bowel strains and earthquakes, tales di fango, di merde, e di oro. Mendes Biondo is fearless, gifted and captivating–like this debut collection of his poetry. As he says in one of his titles, sono uno sporco bastardo e lo so. Simply one of his several strengths.” —Guinotte Wise, author of Horses See Ghosts and winner of the H. Palmer Hall Award for short fiction.
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“Mendes Biondo’s words are words of conflict, words of voyage and longing. They are the words of a man trying to find his place in an unstable modern world in constant flux. There is a yearning for the old, but with a candid realization that modernity stops for no one and that the technology we have all become so reliant on in our daily lives has stripped us in many ways of our identity and humanity and isolated us from our place; our hands in the dirt. There is much wrong with what is clean and easy and Biondo’s work is one of sensual refutation. Rich language that seduces with a wet and earthy mastery.” —Ryan Quinn Flanagan, author of Poems to Knock the Sun Out of the Sky

Sunday, or, the Nightmare of Apocalypse

today is Sunday
and the empire fell down
three hours ago

walls are rotten
cement is smoking
through flames

probably this is hell
or something really near
to it

today is Sunday
and I’m a lazy bone guy
swinging my right leg
from a rocking chair
on a porch

only the porch left
obviously the house is gone
and the streets are full of sand
like in a Mad Max movie

just a dream folks
I’m from a nice place
where to live
I’m from Italy
and this is just the same
nightmare I do every Sunday

I don’t know what it means
to hear a bomb
falling from the sky
like a raindrop

I don’t know what it means
to face a terroristic attack
the hell in the eyes
of screaming people

I’m just a spaghetti eater
and today is Sunday
and the empire fell down
three hours ago

there is no meaning in
my leg swinging from the rocking chair
like the clock has no meaning
or the sun following the moon

a cold wind is rising
through the open porch
and I wake up

it’s monday now
and there is something to do
to make a life