A Concert at the Doge’s Palace with Fans
I’m chased by airbnb on facebook, instagram,
twitter, Ebay, there is its fluttering gif, checking
me out, even on booking.com, which is perverse.
I search for Palladium, Copernicum, Moscovium.
£98 a night, it blares. But hopefully less, I think.
I sleep in a crumbling palace behind a shabby door,
and one afternoon, taste an orange Aperol spritz
in the shadows of a backstreet bar, listening to the cheesy
songs of gondoliers.
A Danish man pulls up a chair, tells me he’s lost and frightened.
‘No one knows I’m here,’ he says. I search his case
of bagged-up shoes and clean, pressed shirts
for a sign, a clue that might help, but all I can do
is put his phone on charge.
One steamy night when the Doge’s Palace
is abandoned by visitors; in my bright green dress
with its too-tight belt and my shoes like rooks, I believe
I’m a lion. With linen fans on beechwood struts,
the air is wafted in violent beat to lute, crumhorn,
portative organ. Lyrics tell of journeys over Adriatic
seas and long-gone people searching
for the element of surprise.
Amanda Oosthuizen’s stories and poems have featured on the London Underground, in art galleries, Winchester Cathedral, in anthologies and numerous competition listings. Recent work is at Cosmonauts Avenue, Storgy, Under the Radar, Ellipsis, 3:AM, Magma, Somewhere to keep the Rain, the Pre-Raphaelite Society’s Review, and is forthcoming in LossLit, Riggwelter, Cabinet of Heed, Prelude, Humanagerie and Ambit. She earns her living by writing and arranging music and teaching woodwind. http://amandaoosthui