Poesia:
From Via Ghibellina
to Skyland Drive
$7 — 28 Pages/Chapbook/Saddlestitched /$7
In May 2019, Mary Jane asked about the Tallahassee heat from her apartment on the Via Ghibellina in Florence. It was still spring in Italy, chilly and gray — I responded with the poem, “Heat / Skyland Drive.” From this exchange, we decided to correspond during her stay in Italy with poems. We began with no expectations and no formal structure, just knowing we wanted to keep in touch through poems. Mostly, the writing played off the preceding poem in some way — but went in some surprising directions. Our foreign and domestic exchange follows. • CLK
THE MOON HIDES HALF ITSELF
(MJR 6/14/19)
a murder of crows
could not keep me from walking
the cobbled stone road
which leads me towards
Botticelli’s Spring or the
Statue of David.
What I’ll miss back home?
two hour naps between class,
the tiny architecture
of ancient coins, of
Menerva and the Hydra,
Etruscan remnants,
red clay roof tiles,
la facciata of Rome,
gold in so many paintings.
vowels at the end
like Montepulciano
Chianti rooster,
black seal of assurance that
the grape is “the blood of Jupiter,”
echo our footsteps on
a quiet night off
the main road where the
moon hides half itself
in a Giotto blue sky.
Vasari’s swarming
people in pastels.
Carravaggio, a murderer.
HIS BRUSH OF RAGS AND FEET OF SORROW PERSIST (CLK 6/15/19)
Caravaggio, a murderer,
slides into my dream —
a tingle of blood, sword
or cat’s claw, a flash of pain,
a shadow, of course —
chiaroscuro, how else
to dream of him
or wake to my angry cat.
a murderer, if accidental,
persists with his sword,
or in this dream the graze
of a claw, does not
lay his weapon,
though his brush of rags
& feet of sorrow persist.
he fades into a deep
shadow, his fingers
stark, grasping a brush,
this dream of claw,
of waking blood.