Circus animals
by Francesca Del Moro
Editorial
by Francesca Del Moro
March 21st not only marks the beginning of spring, it is also the date chosen by UNESCO as the World Day of Poetry. Every year squares, clubs, theatres, bookshops and libraries host festivals, presentations of books and writers, and readings, often dramatized or accompanied by music. To celebrate this event we have invited poets to meditate upon their art and reveal its purpose. Rita Galbucci’s struggle between herself as a person and her poetical self, the historical and civil significance of poets celebrated by Maurizio Landini, Nina Nasilli’s desire for a poetry that can be both a guide and a solace, the revolt of Alessandra Carnaroli’s violated and violent language: the four selected works display as many completely different tones, providing just a small glimpse of the manifold possibilities of poetry.
He says we cry wolf
by Alessandra Carnaroli
He says we cry wolf, wolf, but there’s no wolf, except in my sick and warpedmind nature’s mistake certain abused and violent women he saysWatchoutwhen the wolf cumes, because sooner or later he will come, no one’s gonna believe it, myworst enemies, women, “the healthy ones” not the devilish ones like us who write the fainting spell the smell the river the jaw branch in band it squeezes you know a woman dies she dies and so that’s fine! If she moves forward she crawls on her belly she plods it’s not true that a man kills, women kill all the same men write all the same.
Cry wolf cry boogeyman mantel is burning shoe cock oven all burnt by Nero I write about dead woman levelled bed-gymnast steel top-gymnast it shines dental plate the plane broke my face an eye I write for the eye you’ve lost the hearing the open eardrum the miserable thought of peeing in bed I write as a woman about woman that nothing is true nothing the wail is smoke is dog is she-dog the manure the shit she seeks it as a fly
I write poetry that says damned woman mixed with the sponge with the cudgel the sauce pulled out of the sack out of a freezer a mess. We need women to write belly pull the wolf out of the belly the beast that steers on its haunch the beast that runs away downstairs, the room
Out of the room the room is revolt poetry is ours. It is our fight. In the pulled up kitchen.
Me, I’m not happy
by Rita Galbucci
Me, I’m not happy
With myself, I weigh down
on myself like a flaw.
I am crushed by the comparison
Of being what I am
And yet goggle-eyed
By poetical visions.
I am exhausted
By this restless passion
That I betray and by which
I am always betrayed.
The Dead (or November)
by Maurizio Landini
I believe
that Europe’s roots
are made of the poets too
that we have hidden
quickly:
their pens
keep the land
and the world above.
Rivers of mud and tears are flowing
but if we listen
underneath
the poets are still moving.
Trad. inglese di Federica D’Amato
pick up
by Nina Nasilli
pick up
POET
the pain that tastes like lemon and salt
and put it in the rustled up basket
for emergencies of broken or abandoned love.
there are tender strips (peels …)
of immaculate
sweet meat:
they are looking for a place to rest
out of a storm that makes them yell
like birds (between the torn-up leaves):
wings
still in search
of the lost nest
be the unconscious means
and fair of your unconsciousness –
between the mellow green of nature and the Sapphic green of human pallor
become – you can! – just for one day
/just one minute – or four/
more of a small than a great
bard
to be the solace
lasting as long as a caress on the head
a word of com-passion
and return the sign of a perspective
to the inexperienced friendship
even if just a sketch.
a drawn box
a road
a way
a new elsewhere