Fleshing. Contact no. N ever imagined never I’d never the nose would one day offend the eye, the eye paralyze its own tics in the void never imagined I’d never those teeth could snarl at their own hand, the right hand one day take a knife to its own left never imagined I’d never my own soul would end up slip-shelling its own head, the head one day crash into the knees never & yet it’s happened everyone’s body would hoist itself onto the cross with its own veins, the blue veins of each man vote their own collapse! the blue veins of each man vote their own collapse! the blue of each man vote: collapse! Spinning Head Heel. Contact no. 25 (part right) How to swallow the sea whole make of it the heap that I am? How to cram each voice into the tip of the pencil? How to clot carousels hospital wards & into the same heel accommodate you & the father of your surname? To sing that’s the only blood the poet can give consonant after vowel bleeding oneself into a napkin in a bar writing – poems belong to those who drink them up— poems push you to face the precipice of pulse for this I sing that no one in the choir ever be extinguished in the throat for when I sing I dream I’m fleshing the one language I sing so as not to dance with dying thunder, I sing for when I sing I’m nothing but singing
By Dome Bulfaro
Translated by Cristina Viti
From Ossa Carne
Published by Le Voci della Luna (2011)
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Dome Bulfaro is an award-winning poet, teacher, publisher and performer from Monza. He is founder and director of the Poesia Presente Festival, a school of poetry and performance, co-founder of LIPS (Lega Italiana Poetry Slam) and wrote about Italian slam in Guida liquida al poetry slam.
Cristina Viti is a translator and poet working with Italian, English and French. Her most recent publication was a co-translation of poems by Anna Gréki (The Streets of Algiers and Other Poems, Smokestack Books, 2020). Her translation of Elsa Morante’s The World Saved by Kids and Other Epics (Seagull Books, 2016) was shortlisted for the John Florio Prize.