Native New Yorker LindaAnn LoSchiavo, recently Poetry SuperHighway’s Poet of the Week, is a member of SFPA and The Dramatists Guild. Elgin Award winner “A Route Obscure and Lonely” and “Concupiscent Consumption” are her latest poetry titles. Forthcoming is a paranormal collection of ghost poems, a collaborative horror chapbook, and an Italian-centric book, “Flirting with the Fire Gods,” inspired by her Aeolian Island heritage. She has been leading a poetry critique group for two years.
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Near Tuscany, the mountains lie, great globes
Of difficulty that encourage dreams.
What are dreams if not arrows targeting
The you who’s civil to your fantasies?
Near Tuscany, the cypress trees can thrive,
Defying our obsession with design
Of pretty or predictable nature.
Those woods are ambush angels in disguise.
The Tuscans say their cypress trees provide
The timber used by Cupid, god of love,
To make his arrows. Una freccia —
One arrow — could be cruel to fantasies,
Pricking to life invaluable lies called “love.”
Unsettling storms, contagious heat we blame
On mischief that miscarried — or disarmed.
Since sex is a duet, we can forget
Love sometimes is a song for a single voice.
Love’s much too young to entertain a conscience.
Bougainvillea in Rome
Pink bougainvillea in Rome: it flirts
With you, observing tourists, lost or cross,
Discovering it suddenly behind
Native globed heads in artichoke beds, framed
Loud blossoms licking up the light. Perhaps
Where palms are scattering slim shade on bricks
Or blocks of broken marble it appears,
Regarding you retracing steps, distressed,
Lest you should miss some ruins, eternal bronze,
Le terme di Caracalla. Dov’ è . . .?
And then it shakes its hair: long grapey red,
Mature, royal purple bougainvillea.
Untamable, these woody vines outside
Time keep hitchhiking on Italian breeze.
Green tumbles over relics, wills itself
In cracks, until it stakes you far afield
From tomba di Cecilia. Ready to yield?
You’ve come, arranging Rome to grow inside
Untended, martyring the moment, numbed
And bougainvillea-blind — — till absolved
By flowers, cleansed of clocks, your soul’s involved.
La Fanciulla dell’ Europa West
The camera kissing clicks as film rewinds:
Italian landscape, juiced with fruit and wines,
Your lenses following her strut, estranged
From native lovers who belong. Close range
Reveals dawn’s pinks spread — each day’s valentine.
This teases: how she won’t conform, confine
Herself to private myths you fell for, shines
Despite what buildings claim their right to change.
The camera kissing clicks.
Though conquered, she’s no slave. Her womankind,
Stretch-marked hills, nourishes arts, souls. Divine
Italian influence provokes arranged
Impressions, unforgettable and strange
That urge return. You guard your photo shrine:
The camera kissing clicks.
Poetry in this post: © LindaAnn LoSchiavo
Published with the permission of LindaAnn LoSchiavo