I didn't have a Thing to Wear 40x30x3 cm - mixed media and collage on MDF
BEAUTY TRAP
There we were, snaking over the surface of things, down
the cracked fresco, up the prickly pear. It was
impossible to process so much beauty at one time.
It was like being too drunk to enjoy a Brunello.
Like Stendhal, besotted aesthete, toppling in
some Duomo, we had to take a lot of naps.
But it’s all part of the job: poets have to deal with beauty.
The landlord kept certain family secrets
buried just outside our bedroom window.
Or was it a barely submerged septic tank?
Down in the village, a woman, with a cutting edge
haircut, sliced thin cuts of Parma ham for our sandwiches.
We met a self-proclaimed humanist at the Stazione bar
whose primary credential was four years
of high school Latin. He looked like a
hipster Machiavelli. “In Vino Veritas,” he slurred dryly
while hitting on our waitress. Working one summer
in a Santa Fe convenience store he met a man who had
done a photo-essay on Sophia Loren. “He said
she was gorgeous of course but had the hands of a peasant.”
Why the “but?”
I hate to confess this but I wouldn’t know a peasant’s hands
If, for the mere fun of it, they slapped me across the face.
