Famished

poems by

Angela Gaito-Lagnese

~76 pages, $14 (+ shipping)

Projected Release Date: July/August 2025

An Advance Sale Discount price of $8.50 (+ shipping) is available HERE prior to press time. This price is not available anywhere else or by check. The check price is $13/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 12180 Skyview Drive, Edinboro, PA 16412. 

PLEASE NOTE: Ordering in advance of the release date entitles the buyer to a discount. It does not mean the book will ship before the date posted above and the price only applies to copies ordered through the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore.

Angela Gaito-Lagnese is the author of the poetry chapbook, Squalling (Main Street Rag, May 2021). Her poems have also appeared or are forthcoming in Dionne’s Story: Volume 3, Voices in the Attic, Volume 28, Angel City Review, The Main Street Rag, OyeDrum, Pittsburgh City Paper, West Trestle Review, and others. In addition, Angela was a semi-finalist with Lefty Blondie Press, 2024 Editor’s Choice Broadside Series for her poem “Killed in Action.” Angela has earned an Ed.D. in Language, Literacy, & Culture and an MFA in fiction from the University of Pittsburgh. She is also a regular poetry Madwomen at Carlow University. In addition to writing, Angela is a professor of English at Community College of Allegheny County.

A famished voice with a death wish and an ache for life: “My name is Angela Michaelene Antionette Gaito/and I live on 4th and Orange, East Long Beach, just below/the barrio…where the news reports a found head, no body… I lay claim to whatever is left of the coastline.” With brilliant details and line breaks that roll street-tough narratives, Famished will quench, satisfy, fill you—as deep loneliness collides with a woman telling it true. ~Jan Beatty, Dragstripping, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024

A Dry Hot Season

The bluffs near White Point are burning
multi-million-dollar mansions, postcard-photo sprawls
of lawnscapes, views of Catalina Islands.

Neighbors in San Pedro are outside making neighborly
conversation, watching the sky, the haze, the news breaking
all afternoon, the fire rioting.

Mary’s eyes glint like limestone and we climb
into her truck, drive from Eighth Street to Gaffey, up
and down back roads, past the tracks, Sunken City,

black tar slabs straining through rocky cliffs to get a better view,
the motorcycle bar shuttered, empty. Between lighthouse and ocean,
the sky glows pink, the sun is orange.

Mary pulls on the shoulder, as close as we can get, her cheekbones
flushing neon-rose. The fire rips open before us, bursts into live-wire sparks.
Helicopters hover over the Pacific, swarm back over earth, let loose

red sands and salt water, in tandem, the fire raging.
Fire sprays grow into pylons, flame-arms flapping, flame-legs dancing
across sagebrush, juking over dirt and road, frames folding under roof beams

and trellis, fire-beings traipsing into palm trees, leaping over willows,
cartwheeling into carports, wind-crying.
Ash-snow lands on the windshield.

We both know we can’t stay much longer, but we stay.
It’s so beautiful, I say, thinking about parables and paintings,
slim fingers of smoke sliding in through the vents.

Skinny Girl

Daughter-mother bonding over Dexatrim.
Sleep on an empty stomach, she says. Starving
is the one thing they can’t take away.
I am twelve. We clip neatly printed diet plans
from Ladies’ Home Journal, slip them
under magnets on the refrigerator door.
I don’t even like food anymore.
Pre-dawn race to the ballfield, damp air,
slight wind, one lap, then two, then three, past the edge
of the goal posts, reach the fence, tag the corners.
I don’t talk enough, everyone says, four laps, five, my shadow
pulls westward, neck stretching too long, sharp jutting chin,
head swollen with words, but no one is listening.
Seven, eight, nine laps, not like other children,
ten laps, eleven, does she have any friends?
My knees are pumping, the sun is rising.
At home, legs splay across the worn knobby carpet,
forehead to shins, breathe out, breathe in,
sit-ups and push-ups, squats and planks,
a spin of motion that feels like praying.
Light on the charts by the 7th grade weigh-in. Hips,
shoulder blades, spine stand at attention. A full audience,
gym teacher, school nurse, dream girls, a loose
semi-circle, clapping and whistling.

The Stingray Shuffle

~for all good fathers who die too soon

Bolsa Chica in June, sky as gray as tin,
Rory teaches me the dance his father taught him.

Sometimes they pile up on each other, Rory says
Sleeping, mating, doing their not-quite-fishy thing.

He is a boy again, salt spraying through brown curls,
knees bending low, a flat-footed slip-slide into the ocean,

sole-first, churning up sand in slow toe-circles, leaning back
into summertime riptide, hips gyrating left and right,

shoulders, elbows, hands shimmying, his eyes tearing into back waves,
searching for fleshy diamond shapes, sea wings flapping,

alien mouths agape, spiny tails swishing and slashing. I dance, too,
unpracticed and clumsy, twitching when seaweed sways

too close to my skin, waiting for the jolt, the electric surge
of venom, screeching laughter all afternoon.

Summer, 1979

You cut your hair like a boy, pierce
your ears from lobe to helix, pierce
your lip, tattoo an L across your ribcage

for Love or Lost.
You change your name to Anita,
like the groupie from the Rolling Stones

You want to fuck everyone
like her. You beg for handouts
in airport terminals, clanging tiny cymbals

strapped around your fingers. You dress
in thin cotton shirts, exposing your spine,
your nipples, barefoot with painted toenails,

praising Jesus or Krishna or Buddha, depending
on who’s passing, who’s opening purses or wallets,
under sharp bright slants of fluorescent light.