Issue 24 Preview: Poem in Which I Write Us Into Episodes of The Sopranos, by P. Scott Cunningham
The following poem appears in Barrelhouse Issue 24, which you can buy right here.
For Christina
S4 Ep 13 “Whitecaps”
After Tony backs out of buying the house on the water, we buy it and live there happily until we die.
S6 Ep 8 “Johnny Cakes”
Vito comes into the diner to order his customary Johnny Cakes, but Jim informs him that he just made the last of the day’s batter, and he’s all out. Vito asked who he made them for, and Jim points over at us. We’re at a table in the corner sharing a huge stack of Johnny Cakes, and we smile and wave. Later, Vito murders us at one of those small-town hardware stores that you love because the service is always so much better than at Home Depot.
S1 Ep5 “College”
While visiting Bowdoin College, Tony and Meadow walk around the campus. We’re reading together beneath a tree. We’re too old to be in college, but we don’t look like professors either. Our presence is unsettling, a foreshadowing of the daytime murder of Fabian Petrulio, which takes place later in the episode.
S6 Ep 10 “Moe n’ Joe”
At the end of Tony’s session with Dr. Melfi, he exits her office. A couple is briefly glimpsed waiting to come in next. That’s us. We’re not Dr. Melfi’s patients. We’re her friends. We hang out all the time on the weekends, going to great restaurants, visiting museums, getting coffee. We’re really cool and fun and down for whatever, and that’s why Dr. Melfi loves us.
S6 Ep 11 “Cold Stones”
AJ is fired from his job at Blockbuster, which is fine by us. He was our least favorite Blockbuster employee.
S2 Ep 9 “From Where to Eternity”
In bed, Carmela asks Tony to get a vasectomy. He refuses, but then Carmela changes her mind and tells him not to. When you ask, I say yes to a vasectomy right away, and lo and behold, an appointment has just opened up.
S3 Ep 3 “Fortunate Son”
Tony and Jackie Aprile are having lunch at Vesuvio. Tony tells Jackie to stay away from a life of crime because it’s not what his father would have wanted. We are in the background, out of focus, and we cannot stay away from the bucateli. We just keep eating more and more of it. For years afterwards, we’ll compare every bucateli to this one, annoying every person who serves it to us, but for now, we’re exhausted. We go back to our hotel room, pass out, and wake up at midnight, unsure of where we are.
S6 Ep 21 “Made In America”
Meadow has trouble parallel parking her Lexus. We tried to teach her so many times, and she just couldn’t get it. How are you going to be a doctor if you can’t parallel park?
S5 Ep 1 “The Two Tonys”
As part of his seduction strategy, Tony gets Dr. Melfi a gift basket that includes a bottle of Tide detergent, which inspires me to get you a $25 Buffalo Wild Wings gift card as a wedding present, a gesture that you do not find funny or romantic. Dr. Melfi never dates Tony, but for whatever reason, you go through with the marriage to me.
S2 Ep 4 “Commendatori”
Paulie leans on a railing in Naples, looking out at the sea at sunset. A boat, guided by a single fisherman, drifts by. We are not in that boat, but we should be.
S4 Ep4 “The Weight”
Remember that year we didn’t have enough Halloween candy? The kids just kept coming and we had to shut the lights off and pretend we weren’t home, and then another year hardly any kids came and we had too much, just buckets of it that we ended up storing in cabinets and forgetting about until the only thing to do was just throw it away. Our neighbors Johnny and Ginny give out the best candy, and they put up the most extravagant decorations: ghosts in the trees, skeletons crawling out of the ground, witches flying down from the roof. One year they made a graveyard, and all the tombstones had funny Italian names on them. What a beautiful family.
S4 Ep 2 “No Show”
Patsy, Vito, and some other guys are working “no show” jobs at a construction site in Newark, sitting on lawn chairs all day in the parking lot, reading the paper, eating sandwiches, bored out of their minds. This is a metaphor for our life together before we had kids.
S6 Ep 19 “The Second Coming”
AJ spends entirely too much time reading about world politics on the internet, and it sends him into a tailspin. Across town, we’re on the internet, too, looking for stupid videos to send each other. This is why we’re happy, and AJ is depressed.
S5 Ep 4 “All Happy Families”
The school guidance counselor, Robert Wegler, goes out to lunch with Carmela, who has a crush on him, and he recommends that she read Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. I’m the one who told Wegler about Flaubert. He’d never even heard of him before he met me. I pretty much tell everyone to read Madame Bovary, but I’ve told you the most, because I like you the most.
S6 Ep 15 “Remember When”
Tony and Paulie hang out in Miami with Beansie, who is a big donor to my poetry organization, O, Miami. Beansie just absolutely loves poetry, and we love him.
S6 Ep 13 “Soprano Home Movies”
Tony, Carmela, Bobby, and Janice play Monopoly at a lake house. After they leave, we rent the same house and play our own games of Monopoly there with Jess and Joe. That weekend Joe says many funny things, but he never says anything as funny or insightful as when Bobby insists on playing by the proper rules. “The Parker Brothers took a lot of time to think this all out. I think we ought to respect that.” You and Jess never fight, and Joe and I go fishing and catch a fish. Neither of us knows anything about fish, so we don’t know what kind it is. We just throw it back and wish it the best.
S3 Ep 11 “Pine Barrens”
Out on a hike in the woods, we find a shoe.
S2 Ep 11 “House Arrest”
An associate wrecks his red Camaro at the intersection outside Satriale’s, and the boys run out to see what happened, before taking their customary positions at the red checkered tables. As the camera pulls back toward the sky, away from Paulie sunning his face with a reflector, from Pussy walking back into the store, and from Christopher and Hesh sitting below the blue neon ESPRESSO sign, the song “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory” by Johnny Thunders begins playing, and I put my arm around you.
P. Scott Cunningham is the author of Ya Te Veo (University of Arkansas, 2018), selected by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins as part of the Miller Williams Poetry Series. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in The Nation, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, POETRY, A Public Space, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Monocle, and The Guardian, among others. He lives in Miami with his family.