Susan H. Evans' poem "The Italian Story"

 

“I teach English at a community college and live in Baltimore. I am published in The Mocking Owl Roost, Rising Phoenix Review, Daily Inspired Life Magazine, and Metapsychosis Journal. “

The Italian Story

“Zucchero!” the white-haired donna flutes,

learning on a cane,

while upstairs,

my travel deodorant crumbles

like old feta cheese.

Scout shrugs, smashes her blond hair under red cap.

Starred, she is, and former Knight Templar and World Bank orator,

although her left nostril flakes awful;

while Jackie-O Kim drones nasally,

hair clipped back, black eyes snapping.

Says, “You’re so rude.”

Visits her avatar in Wales, and somewhere in Michigan,

her Greek family froze America’s first apple pies.

But upstairs,

bay leaves brown in a baggie,

and an umber-striped altar stone balances on my dresser.

Downstairs, though,

the ominous rumble of a mini-washer tucked

beside a toilet ruminates on my clothes,

clasped in its cheese grater cage,

while --

mean as a pit bull chained in a thunderstorm --

Kay, Atlanta’s grandDesdemama,

wrings her gnarly hands in the cold

marble kitchen, assuming the lead in Summer and Smoke,

and near misses killing a man on a motorcycle.

She snarls at me, “Don’t touch any dials.”

Outside,

Scout hangs her travel pants on a retractable clothesline

in the shrubbery, as cedars shudder and the olive trees drip.

And upstairs

the short, wistful, silver-tressed, insomniac Liz

with the invisible, but obvious, lip tremble,

sleeps in, sheets torn in imaginary strips.

Looks up from her book and says, “This isn’t exactly a democracy,”

while next door,

the aging Brazilian movie star,

wide-bottomed, tattooed brow,

rises long after the turtle doves coo themselves hoarse,

flowing in a palm-frond kimono and sponge rollers.

Tania suffers mussel poisoning, alternating bouts of diarrhea and sciatica,

while me, sluggish and reluctant to let go, constipates and scratches a spreading rash.

But downstairs,

I wave at the useless plumber out the back window,

as he gives the universal “blow up” gesture,

then stir my boiling oats, and slice big

strawberries, selecting the darkest out of charity.

They think the same about me in their red-beaded insolence.

Insulted, I drag up stone villa

steps while prickles of pain stab up the old legs,

avoiding the handwriting on the wall and focus

on the vintage chandelier’s twisty fluted arms, wiry leaves, and glassy-eyed

flowers hanging from a gold chain.

Might it fall on my head one night?

But outside,

the Twins -- Kim and her grimly-smiling doppelganger --

jump into the Europcar exclaiming, “A trip of a lifetime!”

and speed off with Liz, Scout, and Kay to catch the Empoli train to Rome.

It seems a far stretch to me, and no matter

where I go, there they are.

But,

nevertheless,

we all

smile

bravely,

toast one another, gulping down gallons of red wine,

but in the lingering hours of night,

in hard, lumpy, twin beds

we feel barely connected, and curiously discomforted in faded floral duvets.

© 2022 Susan H. Evans