Ingenue
Joe Gianotti
We need your reconnaissance
from the front,
the trenches you’ll occupy
in Manchester, Newport, Indio.
The dirt you’ll bring home
in your hair,
under your nails,
behind the ears of your poetry.
We need you to paint.
Oils to depict the miscarried men
in their broken down trucks,
toddlers on the knees,
beers in hands.
Watercolors for the women
of main street,
the born and the bred,
who share the town’s hair style
and a pair of True Religions.
Your tempered self-portrait,
a gold leafed halo for their heads.
Joe Gianotti has taught English at Lowell High School in Northwest Indiana for twenty-five years. He is from Whiting, a small, blue collar, industrial town just outside Chicago. He studied English, history, and education at the University of Indianapolis and Purdue University. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in This, Literary Magazine, The Chaffey Review, Steam Ticket, The Tipton Poetry Journal, and other places, as well as collected in the second volume of This is Poetry: The Midwest Poets.