three poems
Laurence Foshee
Henry Holiday’s “Dante And Beatrice” To Dorothy At Twenty
Florence, Italy. 1994
The facsimile first cast its firmer gaze, back to me.
Patricio Gimeno’s, in six decades like bared
Teeth, in Bizzell Library. Durante prematurely
gray for twenty. Triune women paced their scalene
unconcern, his thrice-blessed leading lady only
ever musing down the road. I stood in a sightline’s
way to be thrown to scenes of Fiorenza, Professor
Bizzari, and dubbed “Dantista Dilettantesca”
for three dolled-up years in streets after parting from
my own grade-school puppy obsession—a cistern
my maybe-gay-but-catholic-raised heart tried hard
not to hold and bungled—in streets with Discman
drowning to a Naked Eyes tune on loop. Regina,
I love you but never said it to your stupid face.
Dorothy’s Arrival In Rio De Janeiro
Saudade Day. January 30th 2000
My stowaway, Lament At 26, (paltry wedlock
of inner rote-work demons) ain’t Bill battling overhead
luggage compartment’s Thermopylae, peeking back
at a stewardess bend and ask girls if they need
“sacos de castanhas,” an exosolar
cordiality to our skyhook ears’ first seed
to root Portuguese. I wanted her
too, her cashew Hailstone Sequence
in peevish meninas’ laughter—
Boolean increments,
lust and feckless fun,
the attendant’s
sigh, our wan
button
—
when
we drove
(Rio in
rearview) to strive,
to hope through fissure,
shadowland marriage—love
birds nursed our iron eggs for
multilingual Regina’s “põe
ovos de ferro” as translator,
way past Eduardo Bizzari or cloy-
ing Rainfire James Taylor and Harriet
Onus’s best, scraped barrels of “Devil to Pay
In Backlands,” daquiris’ downfalls, and pages to heat
our Pauline bed’s moony, harsher sheets. I name them her heart.
Lament At 26
Oklahoma. May 20th 1999
This odd absence
turns eight today.
Will he dance mad
as a cootied
second-grader?
Or will he wax
somber, stricken
with bone cancer?
Will he fester?
Or play the game
a prodigal
grandmaster? Will
he waver—or
scream, immortal?