Writer, editor and teacher Wayne Lee (wayneleepoet.com) lives in Santa Fe, NM. Lee’s poems have appeared in Tupelo Press, Slipstream, The New Guard, Writer’s Digest and other journals and anthologies. He was awarded the 2012 Fischer Prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and four Best of the Net Awards. His collection The Underside of Light was a finalist for the 2014 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award; his collection Dining on Salt: Four Seasons of Septets was published by Cornerstone Press in April 2025; and his collection The Beautiful Foolishness is forthcoming from Casa Urraca Press in 2026. Lee is the host of the online Tuesday Poetry Practice community.
First Line of a Romance Novel on a Ferry to Capri
He watched from a chair facing backwards on the stern
deck of the passenger ferry. Sorrento, its arched hotels
perched like pale statesman on cliffs over the harbor,
was disappearing in the wake. Across the bay, Vesuvius
spread its blue shoulders over what’s left of Pompeii.
But it was what lay ahead, not astern, he wanted to see,
so he stepped to the starboard to peek around the cabin
at Capri, rising like a rock fortress from the choppy sea.
A slender woman stood there facing the wind, a latter day
Sophia Loren clad in head scarf, red lipstick and oversized
sunglasses that concealed half her face.
“What’s your story?” she asked as he joined her at the rail.
“You’ve got sixty seconds.” So he sketched the highlights
of his life, then she sketched hers, the rocky marriages,
the lost child, the log cabin she is building in Tennessee.
When he held out his cell phone to take their portrait,
she wrapped her arms around his waist and lay her head
against his chest.
“Will you join me for my last night in Italy?” he asked.
She smiled and said it was her first, that she could not, but
that their story would continue somewhere else, on some
other isle in some other sea, not so many chapters ahead.
Saltarello
My Italianate friend
named for the lively dance
of 14th century Naples
for its peculiar leaping step
for the jumping verb saltare
my terpsichorean friend
you with your double step and a hop
on the upbeat
your vigorous triple meter
danced by bands of courtesans
dressed as men at masquerades
my lusty friend
your quintessential folk dance of the north
your Roman Carnival tradition
and vintage festivities
of Monte Testaccio
you my musical friend
played on the zampogna bagpipe
organetto or diatonic button accordion
accompanied by a tamburello
my married friend
you who accompany weddings
after the newlyweds exit the church
my unpredictable friend
now played in gothic, Medieval
and neoclassical performances
and in metal ensembles
like Dead Can Dance
my dancing friend
you whose name means two or more
such songs
my friend who leaves me
without instructions
as to how to proceed
perhaps to masquerade as a man
Poetry in this post: © Wayne Lee
Published with the permission of Wayne Lee