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Anne Marie Giovingo is a graduate student in the Creative Writing
Program at the University of New Orleans, and is assistant editor for the Italian
American Digest. Her poems have appeared in Mississippi Review, Context
South, Ellipsis, and One Fell Swoop.
E-mail Anne at AAnneMarie@aol.com
or through http://members.aol.com/AAnneMarie/index.html.
Casa di Giulietta
We are on the Via Cappello,
the street named for a hat,
in front of Juliet's house.
Young women are crowding the marble balcony.
They fill the air
with their giggles and expectations, pose
for photographs. The bold ones
extend their arms in gesture.
The men shout
encouragements and approval.
The older women look up
and sigh. Of course
it isn't really Juliet's house,
only a 13th century inn restored
for the sake of tourism.
But we come anyway. It seems
appropriate that someone should toss a hat...
Verona is an ancient place
and can withstand such frivolity.
Only a few streets away
on the Via Arche Scaligeri,
named for the family
to whom Dante dedicated a portion of his work,
Romeo's house stands
empty.
IN THE SLEEP
she is sleeping
she is arranging everything
into small pieces of something
some kind of activity
like a flag being saved into triangle
like a container being filled with wildflowers
certain things are happening
nothing quite right
in the small vase
bubbles of oxygen
rising up like dreams
like small fishes coming to a break
in the surface of a frozen pond
eyes half in half out of the water
what she sees
she would like to tell
everything that she is rearranging
like a small triangle of thought
rising up like a folded flag
rising up like a fish
everything
small
folded
viscous
frozen
THE RAIN ENDED
and all the little tribes
remained in the forest
in the folds of the trees.
They avoided the things that worried them most:
the mysterious cave that gave back warm air,
the sound of the fast water moving below,
the lights in the night sky
and why they flickered in patterns.
How they could remember
was by story
and story
and story
going back
to before they remembered.
But they did not remember for very long.
Some days
all they could do
was to imitate the leaves
quivering.
FAIRY TALE
In the old neighborhood
the gingerbread has been stolen from the houses,
the chimneys taken down
so the grey roofs ascend
into the solemn of nothing.
And all I can feel is your bony elbow in the palm of my hand
as I guide you through these streets.
What can you tell me now--
that the shadows below the eaves
hold thin sparrows asleep in their feathers,
that in some ancient afternoon
a cat walks silent
away from its mew?
Where are the enchanted trees,
a young princess asleep in her bliss?
Who can tell me which are the holy things
which are the lost?
I remember the story about the one brother-swan,
a white wing for his left arm.
No one recorded his uneven joy
while his six brothers,
who could no longer fly away,
became human again
because of their sister's nimble fingers.
Only the youngest brother, not swan,
not man, was lost
between two worlds.
The spell broken
except for his one wing,
the echoes of the swan-cries,
echoes of swan-wings
casting a repetitious shadow
over a young boy's melancholy love,
the lakes, the trees, the left behind.
ICARUS
The day is glinty and fine
and the boy with the dimpled brain
scatters his thoughts to the clouds--
so happy is he that he forgets himself,
forgets his father,
sees the billowing sails on the boats
gliding the watery grave of the young ancients who
flung themselves for want of their lovers
over the cliff's jagged and pinchy spaces,
away from the gardens where the roses bloom,
away from the farmer and his plow,
and he forgets the ocean with its apple green waters,
forgets the subtleties of its traces,
says goodbye to the foam with its linen whites,
says goodbye to the afternoon,
knows what the afternoon offers,
abandons the last waxy layer of sunbeam,
losing his appendages among the stars... |