City of the Dead

City of the Dead

Julia Spicher Kasdorf

With each plague report from Italy, I see Orvieto
empty, those long afternoons after pranzo
when I walked cobblestones in sunshine alone

with the child. Wasps hummed on split figs.
The tourist shop by the Duomo always open―
but how often can you visit a shelf

of wooden Pinocchios?―and the Duomo,
golden crust on blood-stained altar
clothes, frescoed devils flapping over

the Last Judgement. Like feral cats
fed on the doorsteps by matrona
in black dresses, we roamed aimlessly

everyday that October, until we kicked
windfall chestnuts over sloping cobbles
all the way down to that other city

where Etruscan glyphs mark stone lintels,
grass grows in avenues, and a coiled black
snake suddenly woke at my shriek.

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Julia Spicher Kasdorf
Poet & Professor

Julia is a Liberal Arts Professor of English at Penn State University, and the author of four poetry collections including Poetry In America and Shale Play.

Photography by Reginald Van de Velde