{"id":1160,"date":"2008-02-04T07:58:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-04T07:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1160"},"modified":"2008-02-04T07:58:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-04T07:58:00","slug":"sampierdarena-by-julian-stannard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/sampierdarena-by-julian-stannard\/","title":{"rendered":"Sampierdarena – by Julian Stannard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sampierdarena, 1990<\/span>


Do you sometimes remember the night you were born?<\/span>
Rosalba was our gynaecologist of choice.<\/span>
She smoked incessantly, little flickerings of ash<\/span>
transforming her consulting room into a not unreasonable display of pointillismo<\/span>.<\/span>
Her babies were born in a fix of nicotine.<\/span>
A gynaecologist who smoked was bound to do well<\/span>
in those heady days when smoking was almost a necessity.<\/span>
But a gynaecologist who smoked<\/span>
and who was blessed with an eye that twitched\u2026<\/span>
You were born in the hospital of Sampierdarena<\/span><\/span>
in the early hours of March the sixth, 1990.<\/span>
You were crowned in the sweetness of placenta<\/span>
and several little daubs of excrement.<\/span>
Rosalba worked nimbly, her cigarette, her twitching eye<\/span>
that sudden dragging of you into the world.<\/span>

Your mother was led away to recover<\/span>
and I was left holding the baby.<\/span>
We walked, startled father, startled son, along the hospital\u2019s marble corridors <\/span>
edging away from Rosalba\u2019s one good eye.<\/span>
And of course I knew there would be a bar across the road<\/span>
so I put you into my coat pocket like a kilo of trofie<\/span><\/span>
and we slipped into the world of senses.<\/span>
Everywhere there were bancarelle<\/span> of mimosa<\/span>
and I drank coffees laced with grappa<\/span>
and little flakes of brioche landed on your head.<\/span>
Jack, how many hours did we sit there in Bar Franco?<\/span>

Do you recognise the child, Rosalba asked a little strangely.<\/span>
Do you know, Rosalba, I have seen him somewhere.<\/span>
I have seen him in the breaking dawn of uptown Castelletto<\/span><\/span>
I have seen him in the labyrinth of the city<\/span>
I have seen him in the languid Bar of Mirrors<\/span>
I have seen him floating in the waters of Sori<\/span>.<\/span>


\u2022 Julian Stannard teaches creative writing at the University of Winchester and has published 2 collections with Peterloo Poets.<\/span>

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sampierdarena, 1990Do you sometimes remember the night you were born?Rosalba was our gynaecologist of choice.She smoked incessantly, little flickerings of ashtransforming her consulting room into a not unreasonable display of pointillismo.Her babies were born in a fix of nicotine.A gynaecologist who smoked was bound to do wellin those heady days when smoking was almost a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}