Anthony DiPietro

photo by Julie Brigidi

Why I Write

‘Hello—is it me you’re looking for?’ The God of Love held his mother’s hand the morning she opened the garage door and found the Oldsmobile stolen. But in my oldest memory I’m at some kid’s birthday party, leaning against a fourth floor window screen, when a white muscle car rounds the corner. Smell of sugar frosting or of meat-licked smoke or of acrid burning rubber and melted plastic. I hear the bassline bounce on asphalt like a broken muffler, waves of jellied synthesizer strings, and ‘Bil-lie Jean-is not-my lov-er!’ ‘Funkytown’ was Number One when I was born. Disco wasn’t dead for my mother and father. It was where they could live together: she, all soulful melody, and he, in motion constantly. Driving the gold Oldsmobile with a young God of Love strapped in back with windows rolled down, going where? Back and forth on a little half-block bounded by a broken fence between three-family houses and under a tree, Mrs. Capobianco’s Pontiac. Going in search of another car, one that disturbs the neighborhood with Lionel Richie’s pleaful voice on repeat, ‘I sometimes see you pass outside my door—Hello?’ In search, they’d tell me later in the safety of another town, for my mother’s Secret Admirer. Someone who left her side door love letters that were laced with threats for my father. ‘Mama always told me, Be careful who you love.’ What a weak protection spell. The God of Love wore a white glove dipped in silver glitter. State police reported the missing car on the side of 95, or rather a steel-shelled carcass after the flames died. I never ask about this story. A mind has two hands to hold what I know and what I don’t. Everything we write begins with fire.

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Anthony DiPietro (he/him) is a gay sex poet originally from Providence, RI, who has lived throughout New England and elsewhere. Now deputy director of Rose Art Museum, he resides in Worcester, MA. He composed his 2021 chapbook And Walk Through (Seven Kitchens Press) on a typewriter during the pandemic lockdowns, and his debut collection is kiss & release (Unsolicited Press, 2024). Visit Anthony online here.