Tag: painting

A Christmas Phantom

Christmas Eve (1980-?). Acrylic on cardboard. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

Back then, when the tree sellers closed their businesses for the season on Christmas Eve, they would abandon their unsold inventory on the otherwise vacant lots. The hawkers of balsam and fir had no use for their wares after December 24, so the trees stood alone in the dark, like pilgrims queuing up for a shrine. In our neighborhood, late at night on that twinkling holiday, a liberator would appear, dancing through the snowy and quieted lots. The legend has it that he would take the forsaken tannenbaums, throw them into the back of his drop-top sled, and deliver them to shut-ins, leaving the evergreens on front porches for Christmas morning discoveries. The recipients were easily chosen, for in that era, most neighbors commiserated with one another, and one might easily determine which of them were unable, due to illness, poverty, or other misfortune, to venture out and deck the halls.

This was much spoken about for some time, and the mystery surrounding the identity of the benevolent phantom was never convincingly solved. Over time, as often happens, people turned to speculating about other, newly discovered intrigues, and interest in the phantom waned. Yet, even now, we are greeted each winter, in one or two pieces of holiday correspondence from the old neighborhood, with news of Christmas trees being left anonymously on porches.

All legends die hard, especially those grounded in the time of willing hearts and kind intentions.

Welcome Yuletide.

–Danny Grosso

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Flick

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Flick (2019). Acrylic on paper. From my book Trouble is Trouble, available at Amazon Books. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

Excerpt:  “Flick.” He didn’t so much say it a mouth it, as he snapped the cigarette from his fingers. He did not wish to break the serene, crystalline silence of this typical winter midnight. The blanket of snow and the cold added soft pressure to the gathering hush, and he thought he could hear the butt sizzling as it spiraled into its powdery grave.

“I’ll bring you a friend a little later,” he thought, silently communicating to the discarded cig.

Up ahead there was a door with a blue light, and beyond the door, a visit he must make. No snow days with this work. When he gets the call he must answer or there will be no more calls, no more anything. Maybe not even the black of the night without the blue lights. Nobody knows. No matter what they say, nobody knows.

When he reached the vestibule, he stamped the snow off of his feat, and then he froze, realizing he’d broken the silence. The light went off above his head, inviting the darkness to surround him. He stood there waiting, listening to his breath, visible in the cold. He didn’t turn around.

–Danny Grosso

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Another Political Bestiary, Ep. XLVII

Cloture (2020). Acrylic and ink on paper. From my book, Another Political Bestiary, available at Amazon Books. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

Continuing the expeditions of Jeff MacNelly, James Kilpatrick, and Eugene McCarthy, with apologies.

The Cloture

Robed in a Byzantine frock, Book of Spells in hand, the Cloture haunts the aisles of legislative chambers and holds enormous power. The Cloture can, with a mere whispered incantation, rob the legislators of their reason for existence, the continuing dalliance and debate of matters on the floor. This blunt power is all the more hard for the elected to take because it emanates in short order from this soft spoken and opaque creature. The Cloture’s deed is devastatingly quick and lethal, and invariably leaves one side of a legislative body panicked, frightened, traumatized. A friend to the majority, mostly, the Cloture can be vexing as it sometimes switches sides in times of crises or need, proving that it has no ideology but its own mystery and power. By that infidelity, the cloture is at times the ultimate foe of elected officials who, left unable to speak on the matter at hand, are left to cry about it on the prime time opinion shows.

-Danny Grosso

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My Amazon author’s page: amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

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Glare

Glare (2012). Watercolor on paper. From my book, Opening Acts and Other Stories, available at Amazon Books.

Excerpt – Happens every year. That first sunny and warm day in February, that false spring, is the one that captivates enough to distract everyone from the reality that this thaw is fleeting. Office workers head to lunch in shirtsleeves.College boys run to class in shorts.Dapper men of ambiguous means, unwilling to disrobe, unbutton their topcoats as they make thier rounds.

Carlo turned from an alleyway onto the sidewalk.The sun coming from the west blinded him. This happens often when a city’s street grid lines up just so. But no one ever gets used to the several seconds of sightlessness and glare, all while moving with and against the flow of pedestrian traffic. Shoulders bounce off one another, folded umbrelas get caught in briefcase handles, packages get knocked to the pavement.Sunglesses might help, but Carlo won’t wear them because they hide his green eyes. Of ambiguous utility is the shield of the gloved hand, which just exposes the elbow, and a strangers head, to damage. Still, the sun is welcomed in winter by everyone, and some tempt fate by closing their eyes and tilting their heads up, as if to catch a quick walking tan.

Carlo had only taken a few steps from the alley, so he was still blind when he heard the POP!

It was a backfire, some old car, but Carlo was jumpy. He’d had threats all week from the family of his ex. Now he remembered how one of her brothers used to make a sound like that backfire in grade school, by stomping on a closed but empty carton of cafeteria milk.

Carlo had started up with her for the same reason he chased the others – blinded by beauty. She was a stunner. He disregarded the instant notion that the exit from this one might be a little sticky. In addition to her clinginess, he has been shilling for the legit side of a guy that was opposed to her family, and her brothers knew this. Could get ugly.

–Danny Grosso

Instagram @artipolitics and @altoegovintage

Amazon author’s page: amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

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Mud People, No. 24

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Hardie Boy- Mud People, No. 24 (2020). House paint mixed with mud, on paper. From my book, 37 Mud People, available at Amazon Books. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

The Hardie boy is waiting for me. It is 9:14 am and I am already late. The Hardie boy is waiting for me in a place he is sure will allow him to be the first to see me. Leaning against the wooden display case, he has an unobstructed view of the double front doors as I swing them both open and scurry into the foyer. He sort of slides, like a skinny snake, up to me, really up to me, his face a few inches from mine. “Um hmm!” he says, accenting the second syllable with vigor. I try to say “What!” but nothing comes out – my voice is hiding itself – I haven’t spoken since the night before, or rather a few hours before, when it was still dark, and I ran home from the clubs to change clothes.

He is staring at me, only for a second, so I will look at him – he needs me to look at him so he can complete the gag. I do look up, laboriously – I’m bloodshot from the smoke, the drink, the lack of sleep. His crows’ feet spread into his temples. “Close your eyes or you’ll bleed to death,” he says, and then turns on his heel to go fetch me some coffee.

His time on a Mekong River gunboat made him hate tardiness. His time with me made him more accepting of those whose lives sometimes overwhelmed the need for punctuality. He was regimented about everything but me, sort of, but then, he seemed to accept it as his duty to make me laugh, constantly, Reveille to Taps.

He left too early, like a lot of people back then, chasing some demon he had seen before, one that woke him up on that gunboat in the middle of dark and hot jungle night.

-Danny Grosso

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Author’s page: amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

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Neighborhood Royalty, No. 1

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This Guy (1998). Oil on Canvas. From my Book, Trouble is Trouble, available at Amazon Books. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

Excerpt:  “This guy, this guy over there says this thing is gotta get done, and I mean gotta. You get me? This is no joke no more, everybody’s fed up and it’s not good for anyone when the old mustaches get fed up, or even when they hear that everyone around them is fed up. It’s just no good to make waves, and this could be an ocean of ’em if you don’t take care of this thing.” Vince was agitated, walking faster than his normal stroll. He was making his point, making his plan, appointing the contractor. His walking partner hesitated to respond, eyeing the parking meters, then the van on the corner before Vince ushered him around the corner and into a storefront vestibule. “Look at me, Charlie,” he said, and waited to catch his eye. Then Charlie nodded, turned, and walked back to his Seville. He pulled a u-turn into traffic and sped away.

-Danny Grosso

Instagram @artispolitics

Amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

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