Martina

Martina

Luca D’Anselmi

The silent empress writes poetry
at the resort—her life on paper squares:
the family trip when she jumped in the sea,
scaring her mother Maria as she dared
to play Achilles. How grammar days crumbled
in whispers at the wedding to her uncle.

And after Yarmouk, how she lay still
across his laboring chest and listened
to two great lungs that would and wouldn’t fill.
Like Constantine at last he was christened,
leaving her bed, but no celestial signs
confirmed the wills in Christ were intertwined.

Now writing is companioning her mind:
what rhymes with rhinokopia, completes
a line with broken dactyls, missing feet,
a plot that reworks Oedipus the Blind,
in which the younger sons remain whole men
and their mother has a tongue again.

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Luca D'Anselmi
Poet & Teacher

Luca teaches Latin and Greek at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, PA. His poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Hopkins Review, Blue Unicorn, and Wine Cellar Press.  

Photography by Maeva Vigier