Two poems from the Florence-based poet who has published seven poetry collections, as part of World Poetry/Prose Portfolio [WPP], curated by poet Sudeep Sen 

From The Guest in the Woods (Chelsea Editions, 2013) 

(translated from the Italian to English by Diana Thow, Sarah Stickney & Eugene Ostashevsky)

There’s another

child, one that won’t

grow,

who sits

darkly, eyes

two marbles —

a maquette —, who   

drones his

story

up through my

lungs,

who

leans his

head on my

heart

and leaves 

a hollow.     

*

When you find those long edges,

sheets of paper or blades of grass

where one touch is enough

to bring blood:

your words

aim for blind spots                

for the shadowy places              

thin and quiet as needles,

I was covered

without my knowing.

*

I translate your life

through feng shui, prescriptions

I glue your vocal chords back together

I tune the voice you had,

the language

that was written in your body

that was washed away with bleach, with wind, with dishwater 

I can read it to you                still

in those radiographies that you carry around

like your portfolio to the gallerists,

and in the dust at the bottom of the drawers

and left inside gloves

in all these years of acid rain,

that has cleaned your bones like silverware. 

*

You show me your wounds, like a soldier,

your battle

against another you consuming

your eyes, bones,

skin

who cut your tendons a while ago,

the cord that holds you,

diver who won’t resurface.

*

The nerves mended

in the fog, the papers, the jackets

the interlaced fingers

(veins and arteries crossed)

and after the tension on the phone-line, in the pen:

the care-package cakes are active mines,

every noodle a knot, a new debt.

Your world stuck between the lenses,

you-building

collapsing in an instant. 

*

Between us voice

doesn’t travel like 

a hairdryer underwater

but it stops like

a switch,

turned on or off

at random. We two 

are a country

under embargo,

living on parentheses and

silences, on blackouts,

so that when the light

returns, we have already

forgotten what to say. 

*

With all that 

metal 

inside you — world

magnet — you

attract me with fillings,

my bracelets.

I slip toward you, with

your marsupial weight

of pills, the

canned wrongs

undergone, to suck on

in winter for memory:

your lips shining with

that axe that exits

your mouth.

* * * 

in my dream

you are paring my nails

with your teeth: you made me,

you can unmake me,

                            one bite 

at a time.

*

i am

in your palm, with

eyes un-

buttoned

and tail

that cannot

knot:

good enough to eat.

*

and then i plugged the navel

with the hand

no light

to see me

at the end of

the ride, scattered

x's and y's,

marbles 

on the ground.