Volume III Archive

Julie Larios

Ruined Sonnets

Begin by ignoring the mind. Wing it, blind
as a bat,
belfry boggled, your duomo flat, find
your mind's eye but
don't even think of blinking, just fly out
into the burned
blue of Rome. Better water the taut
ropes or turn
into a falling obelisk in flames.
Follow the rats
down to the Tiber, Tourist. You can blame
them and the hungry cats
for what comes next: the city's long howl,
and Lucretia prowling.

*
Lucretia prowls the Lungotevere Ripa,
Boticelli's
busy braiding ribbons into Agrippa's
hennaed hair, the belle
ragazze are tank-topped and tanked, they take
long drags
on their Gauloises, waiting for Caesar, who's late.
A gaggle
of grad students from the Academy sketch
the tops
of columns (Ionic) while Santa Maria watches.
It's hot
an hell, and you're stuck in the ninth level
with Dante's devil.

*
If Dante's devil lets you go, you know
the way
back— circling homeward past the slow
and woe-
ful, past the damned poets in limbo, past
the glued bones
of Capuchin monks, past punks and penitents fasting,
the noisy moaning souls
filling St. Peter's, into the chapeled lap
of that Sistine
sibyl, the Delphic seer who makes you stop
and listen
until the heat dissolves into her song and the gold
of her shot-silk robes.

 

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