Patio Writing
Did I not see the old sign lurking
in the novelty store of my mind?
EPIPHANIES XING, it warned,
or it could have been a promise
— yet I paid it no heed, and kept
on falling asleep and waking up
at the expected times, coming out
under the brow of these hills
with expectations of my own
(having to do with inhaling and
exhaling in a light-chested sort of way):
I was not anticipating the giant June bug
crash-landing on my page, smack
in the middle of yesterday’s verses,
as if drawn there by some ambrosia
of my making.
So once it was airborne again
I checked, but for the life of me
I could not find anything momentous
along those lines, except
that only one day earlier
they had been the life of me.
Stefano Bortolussi is a poet, novelist and literary translator. In his native Italy he has published three poetry collections (Ipotesi di caldo, 2001; Califia, 2014; and I labili confini, 2016) and four novels (Fuor d’acqua, 2004; Fuoritempo, 2007; Verso dove si va per questa strada, 2013; and Billy & Coyote, 2017).