Where else to carry love but on the lips
I silently speak your name this time of sunset
The sun sinks its last drop of honey into the sea
I put aside everything about the day
Try again in words never large enough or small enough
Thank you for showing me that wondrous garden
Crown of dandelion scattering in the breeze like flying stars
The bluebird carrying on its back the blue of heaven
Even as the sky turn black, urges every knifepoint star
To shudder: Greetings to the lonely bride
All these internal verbalizations while the vigilant woman
Slips off her shoes, plants her feet in the garden of raw self
*
If not for you I could never write such whimsy words
This talk is indeed from another world
Like Eros keeping Psyche unconscious
You see, I’ve caught the worst of it
My soul has become the charlatan selling dreams
Mellowing the rain falling like pitchforks
Tearing apart the flowers & the hive of bees
Anyone who knows me would be shocked
To find I can’t tell the sun from a ball of honey
A singing finch from a swollen yellow melon
A flaming-red peony from an exotic bird
As final insult my soul summersaults, spits out:
Floundering is sweet in such a field
*
You are sixty times the food of life
I want to look into your eyes & hear your voice
My bridegroom, you remain invisible
I still have troubling days robbing me of strength
To keep the kitchen table tidy, wash my bed sheets
There are recurring visions of a fish caught in a net
A knife slicing the creature in half
There are lucid moments & I manage to remember
I am the whole self within the self in creative life
*
I buy an atlas & search the forests, a floating bottle in the river
Spread a meal of nuts & berries under the shadow of a pine
My hair is let down and flying
In the grove of wish-fulfilling trees
At last, I find you in a fierce embrace of wind arriving
As the lake swells & earth is shaken, as the sea wildly foams
Look at that! I’m waking unburdened in the light of that dream
With the habit of thanks still in me, & a hunger for breakfast
Marisa Frasca is the author of Via Incanto: Poems from the Darkroom (2014—finalist for the Bordighera National Poetry Prize) and Wild Fennel: Poems and other Stories (2019, Bordighera Press). Her poems and translations have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, among them: The Stillwater Review, Italian Americana, TheRed Wheelbarrow, Journal of Italian Translation, The Yale Poetry Series Anthology, Making Mirrors: Writing /Righting for and by Refugees Anthology. Frasca is the recipient of the Outstanding Riggio Scholar Award, 2010, from The New School where she received a BA, and she holds an MFA in poetry from Drew University. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of Arba Sicula, a non-profit organization that preserves and disseminates the Sicilian language, literature and folklore. Born in Vittoria, Italy, Frasca lives with her husband, Peter, in Manhasset, New York.
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