Afternoon on Torcello by Gail Tirone (I AM STILL WAITING Series)

Afternoon on Torcello
by Gail Tirone

In the shade of the portico
my son sleeps, head on his father’s lap
the deep sweet breaths
of a four-year-old finally at rest
after chasing pigeons in Piazza San Marco
after close calls near small canals
deep sweet boy-breaths
in the shadow of the 7th century church

My daughter and I wander
the Byzantine basilica
our footsteps echoing on 7th century stones
decoding Roman numerals
on the tombs of ancient bishops
marveling at saints’ bodies
silk-wrapped relics encased in glass
lighting tall tapers
whispering prayers for relatives long dead

With chubby fingers she tests the holy waters
all in the reflection of a gently curved nave
mosaic of golden glass
where a blue-robed madonna presides
dispensing the absolution for which
I am still waiting
The patient madonna
greets new generations of children
with their sweet breaths and curious steps
on her old stones

We climb the campanile
set after set of rickety wooden steps
narrow, confining
a spiral skeleton leading
to two bronze bells
that start to ring the hour
the moment we reach the summit

The deafening clang of bronze
declares the certainty of this place
this place that has been here
for over a thousand years—and isn’t going anywhere
a place that knows why it is here
and what it is about

Later at Locanda Cipriani
the children play in the gardens
as my husband and I sip cool Tocai
and reminisce about travels in days past
days less encumbered by careers, possessions—and offspring
days once filled with poetry, romance and wine

“To two out of three,” he toasts
We spend a sweet hour
remembering who we are
and how we got here.

PAINTING: Basilica di Santa Maria Della Salute, Venice by John Miller.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Poetry illuminates individual experiences and the collective human experience. I hope the reader gleans some of both from this poem. Small epiphanies. When reading a poem, that spark of recognition engenders connection—which we could all use more of these days.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gail Tirone is originally from New York, and now lives in Texas. She was a featured guest poet in several Houston Poetry Fests, and is a Best of the Net nominee. Gail has a B.A. from Princeton University and M.A. in English Literature from the University of Houston. Her poetry has appeared in Mediterranean Poetry, Blue Heron Review, Sulphur River Review, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Free China Review, The Weight of Addition Anthology (Mutabilis Press), and elsewhere.

How to Look at the Sea in Winter by Massimo Soranzio (HOW TO Series)

How to Look at the Sea in Winter
by Massimo Soranzio

How do you look at the sea
when there is nothing to see
but a colourless expanse,
a flat and dull reflection
of a blinding sunless sky?

Will you just sit down and wait
for anything to happen
or anything to appear,
immersing yourself in thoughts
shallow or deep? Will you sleep?

Will you count the infinite
shades of grey, brown, palish green?
Will you close your eyes, content
with feeling a bracing breeze
from the sea, brackish and cold?

Will you imagine the lands
beyond that line you can’t see,
the places you have been to
and more you might have seen
had life not kept you ashore?

Will you choose to sit and look
without actually looking,
combining all your senses,
scanning colours, smells, and sounds,
to find a makeshift summer?

Or will you like what you see,
savour the melancholy
of a dismal empty beach
on a gloomy, cloudy day
and become all romantic?

And if you do get to sleep,
will the sea be in your dreams?
Dreams of mermaids or pirates,
holidays past, summer flings,
your collection of seashells?

Let me tell you what I’ll do:
I will sit on this old chair
someone forgot by the sea,
and I’ll look, I’ll look, I’ll look,
losing myself in the sea.

PHOTO: Adriatic Sea, Northern Italy. Photo by Angelina Soranzio (January 2020).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: There have been long periods, this winter, when due to anti-Covid-19 restrictions we were not allowed to cross the municipal limits of our town. But we were allowed to go out for a walk, so we often went for a stroll along the coast.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Massimo Soranzio is a teacher and translator living on the northern Adriatic coast of Italy. His poems have appeared online and in print in a few anthologies, including Silver Birch Press’s Nancy Drew Anthology. He blogs at reflectionspoetry.wordpress.com, where he wrote mostly about his lockdown for NaPoWriMo, in the month of April 2020.

Venetian Midnight Tea Nocturne by Terrence Sykes (LANDMARKS Series)

Venetian Midnight Tea Nocturne
by Terrence Sykes

   The man in 119 takes his tea all alone – “Verdi Cries,” Natalie Merchant

falling winds reverb the centuries
through my open hotel window
ritual midnight tea
cusp of today yesterday tomorrow
what distant isle shores
steeping origins once docked
Ceylon – Formosa – Mauritius

watching the moon sail over
Salute’s silvered light
Accademia’s bridge creaks
in remembrance of tourists
yet the echo of Bembo
halts my fountain pen
into limbo

ten days I came to
forget the past
one week has already passed
but I remember
each night the rising
floods my room
from the enjambed window

across the Grand Canal
Punta della Dogana
riding endless waves
Vivaldi’s autumn
echoing emitting ethers
though winter is not far away
longing for the other

seasons of my life
could I play them from memory
yet no violin nor fiddle
at hand or within reach
drawing a map in my mind
upon the pages of my soul
endless ramblings

along the way from portals
decommissioned churches
wandering & meanderings
what treasures wash along
the canal walls
if only I had faith
to baptize my grasp

cosmic concerti must end eventually
gathering my scattered verse
souvenirs camera
journaled memories
I rise – ajar the door
place the tea tray
upon the passage floor

awaiting checkout
spring fades into summer
purloin one last croissant
shut the entrance door
but the open window
back to this room
will never close

PHOTO: Grand Canal and Basilica Santa Maria della Salute, Venice, Italy. Photo by Iakov Kalinin, used by permission.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Several years ago, I heard Natalie Merchant sing “Verdi Cries” … I listened over and over … it drew me in … of course I’m a tea lover and a loner  … so I decided to do a poem …. IMAGINING myself in the song … I took the liberty to use Vivaldi since he lived and worked in Venice …

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Although Terrence Sykes is a far better gardener-forager-cook . . . his poetry-photography-flash fiction have been published in Bangladesh, Canada, Ireland, India,  Mauritius, Pakistan, Scotland, Spain, and the USA . . . he was born and raised in the rural coal mining area of Virginia and this  isolation brings the theme of remembrance to his creations — whether real or imagined.

Visiting Ulli by Cheryl Levine (LANDMARKS Series)

Visiting Ulli
by Cheryl Levine

I boarded the train at the Santa Lucia station in Venice and headed north, towards the city of Trieste, to visit Ulli. We had met in an on-line forum on Italy and, in particular, the Italian language. She was learning English; I was studying Italian. We wrote long emails to each other in the languages we were hoping to acquire more fluently. She would correct my Italian, and I her English. Through these communications, we shared our love of art and architecture, good books, and tagliatelle with wild boar sauce.

When Ulli learned I was traveling to Venice, she urged me to take the two-hour train ride to visit her in Trieste. She was waiting for me at the train platform, smartly dressed in a slim skirt and blouse, handbag hanging from her folded arm. “We’ve lots to do in a short amount of time,” she declared as we left the train station. I told her what my daughter said before I left home: “Let me get this straight. You’re getting on a train alone and traveling to a city you don’t know to meet some stranger you met on the Internet. If I told you I was doing that, you would kill me.”

Ulli threw her head back and laughed. I felt like I had known her forever.

We had prosciutto, mozzarella, and melon for lunch at Trieste’s well known cafe, Buffet da Pepi. We walked the streets of the city, admiring the Classical architecture, so different from the Baroque and Rococo present in other parts of Italy. For our last stop, we hopped in her little Fiat and drove along the Adriatic Coast to visit the grounds of the stunning Castle Miramare, a famous landmark with sweeping views of the sea below it.

If not for Ulli, I would never have visited this beautiful castle in this beautiful city.

PHOTO: Miramare Castle, Trieste, Italy by Lev Levin, used by permission.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Miramare Castle is a 19th-century castle on the Gulf of Trieste between near Trieste, northeastern Italy. Built from 1856 to 1860 for Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian and his wife, Charlotte of Belgium, it was designed by Carl Junker. The style reflects the artistic interests of the archduke, who was acquainted with the eclectic architectural styles of Austria, Germany and England.  (Source: Wikipedia)

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I enjoy the challenge with travel writing in finding an angle to what the traveler is seeing, hearing, experiencing. In that way, one is not merely stating the facts but digging deeper into the true meaning of travel.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cheryl Levine is a former newspaper columnist and freelance editor. She has had essays published in Dreamers Creative Writing Magazine, 24PearlStreet blog, and Silver Birch Press, and has read for Grub Street’s Tell All Event in Boston. She is currently working on a memoir dealing with a range of intersecting topics from her Italian-American heritage, to parental abandonment and its effects on identity, to scary medical diagnoses. She lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

PHOTO: The author during her travels.

Siena, Tuscany, Italy by Leslie Sittner (LANDMARKS Series)

Siena, Tuscany, Italy
by Leslie Sittner

afternoon cocktails at an outdoor Campo café
we look out on the familiar Piazza del Campo
historic focal center of Siena
soft in shape and conical in elevation
a most spectacular medieval square
no costumed jousts, ceremonies, pageants today
the medieval Palio three-lap horse race is next week
reminiscing, refreshed, rested, we wander up to

the medieval Duomo di Siena above the Campo
Italian Gothic black and white marble jailbird stripes
wrap the façade and adjacent Romanesque campanile
while Venetian mosaics and Pisano sculpture
join in the adornment frenzy
needlelike spires reach to the heavens for hope, forgiveness, love
three dominant central arched doorways
welcome all in need

inside, clusters of striped columns soar to the saints
elaborate mosaics embroider all pavement
sitting side-by-side in a proximal pew
ignoring the surrounding tourist hordes
we gaze up speechless at the Pisano pulpit
eight-sided carved marble bowl supported by nine columns
sculpted in animals, Bible stories, The virtues, Allegories

tightly holding hands, we wipe away the holy water of our tears

PHOTO: Duomo di Siena, Siena, Tuscany, Italy, by Lyrna1, used by permission.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Siena Cathedral (Duomo di Siena) was designed and completed between 1215 and 1264. The exterior and interior are constructed of white and greenish-black marble in alternating stripes, with the addition of red marble on the façade. Black and white are the symbolic colors of Siena, linked to black and white horses of the legendary city’s founders, Senius and Aschius. The finest artists of the time — Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, Donatello, Pinturicchio, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Bernini — completed works in the cathedral. (Source: Wikipedia)

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: In 2015, I took my daughter to Italy for a Tuscany Yoga Tour to celebrate reaching our birthdays of 40 and 70. I had lived in Italy with her father for two years before she was born. She had been here before with a college friend and later with her husband-to-be. After morning yoga at the rustic farmhouse, Antico Borgo di Tignano, we went on a day trip to Siena. In the Duomo, she shared her reasons for leaving her husband of 10 years. I shared that during a trip to Italy with her father, I decided it was time to leave him when we returned home. I can’t help think Italy might be a marital jinx.

PHOTO: Interior columns and altar area, Duomo di Siena, Siena, Tuscany, Italy, by Peter K. Burian, used by permission.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Leslie Sittner’s print works are available in The Apple Tree by Third Age Press (2016-17-18-19-21), Adirondack Life Magazine, BraVa anthology, and read on NPR. Online poems and prose reside at unearthed, Silver Birch Press, 101Words, 50 Word Challenge, 50 Word Stories, Epic Protest Poems, and Adirondack Center for Writing. A collection of essays about European travels with her ex-husband in the late 1960s awaits publishing. Leslie is currently editing the memoir written by her ancient dog and compiling her own book of haiku with photographs.

A Wander in Roma by Carol A. Stephen (LANDMARKS Series)

A Wander in Roma
by Carol A. Stephen

These soles have sweltered in unforgiving sandals as we wandered
streets of an August Rome, stood outside the Colosseum, paced
patterns on Capitoline Hill, then thankful to ride the street car
from Piazza Venezia to the Spanish Steps. Happy too, for
running shoes from Seoul in a Roman shop, that cushioned bunions
as they complained with every step on St. Peter’s marble floors.

PHOTO: The Spanish Steps, Rome, Italy, by Neirfy, used by permission.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Spanish Steps in Rome, Italy, climb a steep slope between the Piazza di Spagna at the base and Piazza Trinità dei Monti, dominated by the Trinità dei Monti Church at the top. Designed by architects Francesco de Sanctis and Alessandro Specchi, the stairway of 135 steps was built in 1723–1725 . (Source: Wikipedia)

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My late husband was a refugee from Hungary during the 1956 uprising. As a young man, he traveled widely, although he settled in Canada and became a proud Canadian citizen. He wanted to show me every place he had been. We managed most of them before he died in 2004. We went to Europe in the summer, 2001, arriving in Italy at the hottest time of year, August. I was a rather bigger woman at the time, and the heat did take a toll, including on my feet!  John insisted I appear in a photo at every landmark we visited. I am wearing the running shoes I bought in Rome, the ones from the poem.

PHOTO: The author in front of the Colosseum, Rome, Italy (August 2001).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Carol A. Stephen’s poetry appears in Poetry Is Dead, June 2017, and numerous print publications, including Wintergreen Studios chapbooks, Sound Me When I’m Done and Teasing the Tongue. Online poems appear at Silver Birch Press, Topology Magazine, The Light Ekphrastic, and With Painted Words.  She won third prize in the CAA National Capital Writing Contest, and was featured in Tree’s Hot Ottawa Voices.  She served on the board for Canadian Authors Association-NCR and co-directed Ottawa’s Tree Reading Series. She has five chapbooks, two released in 2018 — Unhook, catkin press, Carleton Place, and Lost Silence of the Small, Local Gems Press, Long Island, NY.  In 2019, Winning the Lottery, Surviving Clostridium Difficile was published by Crowe Creations.ca. Visit her blog at quillfyre.wordpress.com.

Duomo, Florence by Neil Creighton (LANDMARKS Series)

Duomo, Florence
by Neil Creighton

You come upon it suddenly,
meandering through narrow streets,
past beige, time-coated buildings,
turning down the curve of Via de’ Martelli,
casually drawing near to the street’s end
and then you gasp.

You come upon it unprepared,
seeing at first only the soaring facade
and the enormity of its tower,
but turning into Piazza del Duomo
you see its length, the immensity of its domes,
and again you gasp.

You come upon it in amazement,
seeing it as glistening white marble
with geometric patterns in pink and green,
embroidered, scrolled, balanced, harmonious,
exquisite in scope and detail,
and again you gasp.

You come to it in awe,
its front a composition in threes:
three great doors rise in elegant curves;
above them three circles spoked like sunbeams;
always the one in the center is highest or largest
and you think you understand.

You come to its details:
complex, embroidered patterns in stone;
paintings in colored stone above each door;
lines of sculptured figures in porticoes of blue
and circular inlays glinting with gold
and you feel overwhelmed.

Perhaps later you will walk through the doors
and again feel its power and artistry,
or you will climb the narrow stairwell
to the dome’s dizzying height
but now, in this first sudden moment
you are overcome by its beauty
and, dimly realizing its complex grandeur,
praise the vision that conceived it,
the capabilities that built it,
the artistry that embellished it,
the materials that adorn it
and you stop, stand still, and stare.

PHOTO: Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore (Duomo, Florence, Italy) by Pitinan, used by permission.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Back in the days when travel was possible, my wife and I loved to travel. Italy is very special and I wrote a great deal there. Here I try to capture that sense of suddenly coming upon an architectural masterpiece.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Neil Creighton is an Australian poet whose work as a teacher of English and Drama brought him into close contact with thousands of young lives, most happy and triumphant but too many tragically filled with neglect. It made him intensely aware of how opportunity is so unequally proportioned and his work often reflects strong interest in social justice. He has been widely published, both online and in hard copy. He is a contributing editor at Verse-Virtual,  an online poetry journal. His chapbook, Earth Music, was published by Praxis Magazine Online in 2020. Loving Leah was published this year by Kelsay Books and Rock Dreaming has been selected for publication by the same publisher.

PHOTO: Duomo (Florence, Italy) by the author.

The Corso Buenos Aires by Tricia Marcella Cimera (LANDMARKS Series)

The Corso Buenos Aires
by Tricia Marcella Cimera

Famous long street in Milan,
I used to walk your length with my father.
Do you remember us?

In 1974 I was nine years old, skinny,
in love with Leonardo da Vinci,
living in your ancient city.

My father took me to behold
“The Last Supper.” We often
passed by La Scala, the Duomo.

But it’s you, Corso Buenos Aires,
that I think of. While my father
whistled wartime songs from 1945

(my dreams are getting better all the time),
I held his hand every night when
we went for a walk together.

Your shop lights shone on our faces,
do you remember us?
We were famous for our happiness.

PHOTO: Corso Buenos Aires (Milan, Italy, 1960s).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My father appears frequently in my work. His life was like a beautiful poem, and I was lucky enough to be in it.  My family and I lived in Milan, Italy, for one glorious year in the 1970s. My dad was Vladimir (Val) Cimera. The reason he loved to whistle/sing songs from WWII was because American soldiers liberated his country, Czechoslovakia, in 1945 when he was 16, and he fell in love with all things American. Then he immigrated to the US.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tricia Marcella Cimera is a Midwestern poet with a worldview. Published works have appeared in places ranging from the Buddhist Poetry Review to The Ekphrastic Review.  Her micro-chapbook called GO SLOW, LEONARD COHEN was released through the Origami Poems Project.  One of her poems was pleased to receive a recent Pushcart Prize nomination. Tricia lives with her husband and family of animals in Illinois, in a town called St. Charles, by a river named Fox, with a Poetry Box in her front yard.

AUTHOR PHOTO CAPTION: In the Ogunquit Museum of American Art [OMAA] located in Ogunquit, Maine, one of my very favorite places in this big world.

carnevale by Joseph A. Farina (WEARING A MASK Series)

carnevale
by Joseph A. Farina

faux cavaliere
and belle contesse
wear rapiers and satin gowns
faces masked
white and black
masks with plumes
and daemon horns

savage-exquisite

well-heeled patrons
playing carnivale
against a backdrop
of giant photographs
— the grand canal
and st. marks square
venice recreated
in kodachromatic slides —

savage-exquisite

replicated gondolas
sit still on concrete floor lagoons
as gondoliers songs
play from speakers above the
crowded room —
all shadows of the actual
masks-rapiers-revelers
fluttering gowns —
the intoxicating liaisons
quick hands under black cloaks
lovers liquid
in the shadows of sighing bridges
above starlit canals
where waves kiss
the gondolas lacquered black
reflecting this night’s pagan moon

savage-exquisite

above San Marco’s crucifix
above the Doge’s palace
a throng of masks — black and white
moving in and out of shadows
meeting — parting — becoming shadows on the piazza
urgency in their searching
a frenzy of rustling costumes and clattering heels
ending at the coming dawn

savage-exquisite

PHOTO: Mask shop (Venice, Italy) by Joseph A. Farina.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph A Farina is a retired lawyer in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. Several of his poems have been published in  Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, Ascent, Subterranean  Blue, The Tower Poetry Magazine, Inscribed, The Windsor Review, Boxcar Poetry Revue , and appears in the anthology Sweet Lemons: Writings with a Sicilian Accent, and in the anthology Witness from Serengeti Press. He has had poems published in the U.S. magazines Mobius, Pyramid Arts, Arabesques, Fiele-Festa, Philedelphia Poets, and  Memoir (and)  as well as in the Silver Birch Press “Me, at Seventeen” Series. He has had two books of poetry published—The Cancer Chronicles  and The Ghosts of Water Street.

Italian Masks By Terrence Sykes (WEARING A MASK Series)

Italian Masks
By Terrence Sykes

After numerous trips to Italy it was determined I should buy a Carnival mask . . . the calli in Venice are laden with storefronts galore to buy marbled paper & masks . . . one even if you never have any intention of attending Carnevale before the Lenten season . . . after visiting the ones noted in our travel guide & making my selection & purchase . . . carrying that shopping bag with the large nose protruding . . . left me unmasked as a tourist

Most times in Italy I am maskless when I fool people into believing I am someone I’m not . . . researching & growing heirloom vegetables is a hobby of mine and I stop at every place that sells seeds . . . on this occasion we were in the middle of nowhere in Emilia-Romagna in this little store and as we paid for the seeds . . . the clerk reminded us it was time to plant them . . . my husband told him we weren’t from here . . . Oh you must be from the Veneto! Must have been that mask I bought in Venice

Another time we were visiting the Architectural Biennale in Venice . . . its grounds are in the Arsenale . . . a part of the city tourists only frequent to attend the Biennales . . . after seeing the exhibits for the day . . . we slowly meandered though empty narrow side streets and decided to stop for an afternoon espresso . . . two pale-skinned Americans entered a dark empty bar . . . my husband ordered our drinks with Italian precision . . . as she sat our drinks before us she was puzzled and softly spoke . . . Oh you ARE Italian . . . you must be from the Trentino

I wore that Pulcinella mask every New Year’s Eve dinner party for years . . . then one night around midnight an errant water pitcher transmuted it back to papier-mâché . . . leaving me maskless once again

PHOTO: “Window of a mask shop in Venice, Italy” by Sheila Sund (2006).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My initial concept was the time I went to a gay Halloween party . . . maskless . . . as an intellectual straight man . . . but thought this angle would be more interesting . . . I adore Italy and especially Venice . . . a tourist destination since they stole the bones of St Mark all those centuries ago.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Although Terrence Sykes is a far better gardener-forager-cook . . . his poetry — photography — flash fiction have been published in Bangladesh, Canada, Ireland, India,  Mauritius, Pakistan, Scotland, Spain, and the USA . . . he was born and raised in the rural coal mining area of Virginia and this  isolation brings the theme of remembrance to his creations — whether real or imagined.