Fresco Alfresco
by M

Francesca wants to know who do you think

you are, Michelangelo? Contentment is lying

on the scaffold with dye in its eye.

I have gone so long unwashed, I offend

myself. Concern wets the family’s hair

like holy water. When will it be done?

they ask of a composition with no prelude,

no mezzo, no denouement. I eat from tubes

of cadmium red and they shit scarlet

saints. Nudes in the papal chapel scream

Lasciami stare when Braghettone

gives them pants. Simon laughs at everyone

who carries someone else’s cross. Don’t you know

Chi s'aiuta Dio l'aiuta? Go get your own

grief, don’t help yourself to mine. People are selling

it at the cemeteries in different denominations.

The widow at a grave in Buccheri buys

a year’s worth. Her relatives should give her

at least that long before they shove

a ticket to America in her hands.

I could be your change of scenery, says the man

across the table in Mazella’s on Philadelphia Pike.

His name is Jacopo, the nephew

of Uncle Sallie’s friend. The lowest leaf

on the rose in the bud vase starts to burn

when he lights the votive candle

like he does every Sunday at St. Anthony’s

to pray for an end to his mother’s

fascio di nervi, to say nothing of his own.

I blow it out. He wears failure

like plaid pants with a striped shirt and winks

M has served as an Associate Poetry Editor for Stirring: A Literary Collection (http://sundress.net/stirring/) for the past one hundred years or so. Her work has appeared in a variety of journals—ThePedestal Magazine, Word Riot, three candles, 3rd Muse Poetry Journal, New World Review, Eclectica Magazine, The Rose & Thorn, and others. She also serves as an Administrator of the online poetry workshop, Wild Poetry Forum. Her current chapbook manuscript is wandering through post offices everywhere in search of a publisher. In the few seconds a month when she is not working on these projects, she reads mostly novels, walks along Portland’s bustling city streets with her man, and is grateful for the enormous amount of love in her life.

© 2008 prickofthespindle.com