Joe Fusco

As a teenager, I once wadded a piece of yellow-line paper into a spitball then tossed it into the air, right into my left ear.

At the emergency room, the doctor poked around with a giant tweezer for what seemed like an eternity then finally took out a super-size Q-tip and pushed the spitball out the other side of my head, thus confirming my father’s theory of what was between my ears at fifteen.

Daughter

There’s a picture of you on my bookcase,
I haven’t really looked at in quite a while.
Your long brown hair is in pigtails tied with blue yarn,
You‘re smiling with just a few tiny teeth showing,
Dimples in your cheeks and chin,
Eyes like black olives.
The top of the blue print dress you wore the first day of Kindergarten borders the photo.
I picked you up that day and you were so excited about your first day of school.
I walked you home and kissed you goodbye and said "I love you, honey. "
You said," I love you too, daddy."
That summer your mom moved you back to Connecticut.
I have other pictures:
               Your 1st Communion
               Halloween
               Recitals
               Your high-school graduation.
But the picture on my bookcase reminds me of
the bond we had, however brief, as father & daughter.
The last time that I said "I love you, honey," and
You responded with something other than "me too."

"Spam" Stories

When I was young we were so poor and there
were so many mouths to feed,
My mother would buy a large can of Spam and
shape it like a turkey and ask us to use our
imagination at Thanksgiving dinner.

In 7th grade, I sometimes ate lunch at Joey
Power’s house. His mom would make Spam sandwiches
and tell us it was liverwurst which I also hated,
Hence my 1st experience with a double-negative.
Mrs. Powers was a lanky woman
with scraggly hair and a pock-marked complexion
who constantly reminded Joey
that his father abandoned them for a young blonde.

I never met Joey’s dad but certainly couldn’t argue with
his decision-making.

Last week, we ran out of cold-cuts so my wife
brown-bagged Spam on pita-bread. She found the can in
the deep recesses of the kitchen cabinet; we think
it came with the house eight years ago. She tried to
embellish it with mustard, relish, cheese, lettuce,
and tomato, but one bite and I was at Thanksgiving
dinner, two bites and Mrs. Power’s was bitching
about her old man.

I threw the sandwich out and bought two hot-dogs
from a street-vender, preferring my luncheon meat in
a shape not so haunting.

Joe Fusco Jr., a semi-finalist in Worcester Magazine's Poetry Contest in 1996, '97, and '98, was voted "Best Poet" by the readers of Worcester Magazine in 1999. He has been featured at many Massachusetts bookstores and poetry rooms, and has published two volumes of his poems in addition to his first chapbook, "The Great Depression." He lives in Worcester with his wife, Cyndi, and their four children.

Joe Fusco read his work at the Folk 'n' Word Festival, Oct. 10, 1999, at the Green Rooster Coffeehouse, 6 Institute Road, Worcester, Mass.

three by joe fusco jr.

Space

Daughter

"Spam" Stories