Taxidermy

No display cabinets
for you, but black
and white rooms,

unhinged doors,
thresholds leading
everywhere and

anywhere. And you.
Evanescent fragments
of skin stuffed

with your personality
surrounded by objects,
debris, flowers.

Precious specimen
of human taxidermy
dancing amidst

shafts of light.

(for Francesca Woodman)

—

This selection comes from Alessandra Bava’s chapbook They Talk About Death, available from Blood Pudding Press. Purchase your copy here!

Alessandra Bava lives and works in the Eternal city. She holds an MA in American Literature and manages her own translation agency. She is the author of two bilingual chapbooks, NOCTURNE (Edizioni Pulcinoelefante, 2013) and GUERRILLA BLUES (Edizioni Ensemble, 2012).

THEY TALK ABOUT DEATH is her third chapbook but her first US published chapbook. Her fourth chapbook is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She is the editor of ROME’S REVOLUTIONARY POETS BRIGADE ANTHOLOGY Vol. 1 (Edizioni Ensemble, 2012) and ARTICOLO 1 (Albeggi Edizioni, 2014). Her poems have appeared in several journals such as Plath Profiles, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Empty Mirror and Left Curve. In 2010 she had a cathartic encounter with SF Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman and she is currently writing his biography.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

Madame Bowery

It’s the Seventies and one can’t expect to
see the late 19th century street gangs, nor
Crane’s Maggie & Co.’s despair, nor the
leisure destination of two centuries earlier,

nor the arias filling the small shop run by
Mozart’s librettist. He sings “Così fan tutte,”
but not to you Madame Bowery. Your dress
is scanty and no black train follows it, your

lips are smeared with poison, your eyes
filled with lines sparkle along these streets.
Treading in the cold winter skyline,
your spirit soars as a pearl gray crow.

(for Patti Smith)

—

This selection comes from Alessandra Bava’s chapbook They Talk About Death, available from Blood Pudding Press. Purchase your copy here!

Alessandra Bava lives and works in the Eternal city. She holds an MA in American Literature and manages her own translation agency. She is the author of two bilingual chapbooks, NOCTURNE (Edizioni Pulcinoelefante, 2013) and GUERRILLA BLUES (Edizioni Ensemble, 2012).

THEY TALK ABOUT DEATH is her third chapbook but her first US published chapbook. Her fourth chapbook is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She is the editor of ROME’S REVOLUTIONARY POETS BRIGADE ANTHOLOGY Vol. 1 (Edizioni Ensemble, 2012) and ARTICOLO 1 (Albeggi Edizioni, 2014). Her poems have appeared in several journals such as Plath Profiles, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Empty Mirror and Left Curve. In 2010 she had a cathartic encounter with SF Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman and she is currently writing his biography.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

Rimbaud’s Spoon and Fork

How many did you feed on arsenic with
that spoon? How many times did you
hold those shiny utensils in your hand
dreaming vowels and drunk boats,
in a preposterous mood? How many times
have your azure eyes laid their
stare on them, cussing lines at the
world? The poet’s table is coarse, set with
bowls of steaming ink, with forked tongues
feeding on Truth, and visionary imagination.

Et donc, mangeons!*

*And so, let’s eat!

(After Patti Smith’s photograph)

—

This selection comes from Alessandra Bava’s chapbook They Talk About Death, available from Blood Pudding Press. Purchase your copy here!

Alessandra Bava lives and works in the Eternal city. She holds an MA in American Literature and manages her own translation agency. She is the author of two bilingual chapbooks, NOCTURNE (Edizioni Pulcinoelefante, 2013) and GUERRILLA BLUES (Edizioni Ensemble, 2012).

THEY TALK ABOUT DEATH is her third chapbook but her first US published chapbook. Her fourth chapbook is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She is the editor of ROME’S REVOLUTIONARY POETS BRIGADE ANTHOLOGY Vol. 1 (Edizioni Ensemble, 2012) and ARTICOLO 1 (Albeggi Edizioni, 2014). Her poems have appeared in several journals such as Plath Profiles, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Empty Mirror and Left Curve. In 2010 she had a cathartic encounter with SF Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman and she is currently writing his biography.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

St. Baudelaire

I dream of you at night
entangled in the spires of evil,

tied to a living pillar in the
profane sanctuary of Poetry—

the spores of wild flowers in
your nostrils, the ecstasy of

“the Word” painted on your face
& slowly dripping from your

St. Sebastian-like wounds
in sanguine lines.

I twist the arrows in your flesh,
I dip my fingers in your scars

as you spit out your own
poisonous mythology

into my soul.

—

This selection comes from Alessandra Bava’s chapbook They Talk About Death, available from Blood Pudding Press. Purchase your copy here!

Alessandra Bava lives and works in the Eternal city. She holds an MA in American Literature and manages her own translation agency. She is the author of two bilingual chapbooks, NOCTURNE (Edizioni Pulcinoelefante, 2013) and GUERRILLA BLUES (Edizioni Ensemble, 2012).

THEY TALK ABOUT DEATH is her third chapbook but her first US published chapbook. Her fourth chapbook is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She is the editor of ROME’S REVOLUTIONARY POETS BRIGADE ANTHOLOGY Vol. 1 (Edizioni Ensemble, 2012) and ARTICOLO 1 (Albeggi Edizioni, 2014). Her poems have appeared in several journals such as Plath Profiles, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Empty Mirror and Left Curve. In 2010 she had a cathartic encounter with SF Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman and she is currently writing his biography.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

The Murder of Stars

(August 19, 1936)

The garden is still dark and warm, dawn
will come but not for me. The smell of
steel caresses my back as your loving hand.

They brought me here under the bluest
firmament with political contempt. The
duende of the swirling stars burns in me

as a galaxy of lines I shall write no more.
The trigger shoots. My blood is a constellation
of red roses singing from a mass grave.

Then I realized I had been murdered…
They never found me?
No. They never found me.

(all words in italics by Federico García Lorca)

—

This selection comes from Alessandra Bava’s chapbook They Talk About Death, available from Blood Pudding Press. Purchase your copy here!

Alessandra Bava lives and works in the Eternal city. She holds an MA in American Literature and manages her own translation agency. She is the author of two bilingual chapbooks, NOCTURNE (Edizioni Pulcinoelefante, 2013) and GUERRILLA BLUES (Edizioni Ensemble, 2012).

THEY TALK ABOUT DEATH is her third chapbook but her first US published chapbook. Her fourth chapbook is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She is the editor of ROME’S REVOLUTIONARY POETS BRIGADE ANTHOLOGY Vol. 1 (Edizioni Ensemble, 2012) and ARTICOLO 1 (Albeggi Edizioni, 2014). Her poems have appeared in several journals such as Plath Profiles, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Empty Mirror and Left Curve. In 2010 she had a cathartic encounter with SF Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman and she is currently writing his biography.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.