Tuesday poem #250 : Domenica Martinello : PARTHENOPE & VIRGIL

Women are cities & cities

are humiliating.

Tourists haggle the price

& somehow still pay double.

The city is leaky

& smells like fishwives.

Locals chide in dialect

tangy as a faux leather belt.

Men are angry & angry men

turn each other into volcanoes.

What is it like to live

in the shadow of a volcano?

On the cusp of eruption

it’s exciting

for the tourists. Burning through

their cash, it’s all you can smell.

Volcanoes violate cities

to ash & stone. It’s a pity.

I’d pumice my feet with it all
if I could.

Domenica Martinello, from Montréal, Quebec, is currently completing an MFA in poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 2017 she was a finalist for both the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers and the 3Macs prize. Recent writing can be found in The Globe & Mail, Vallum, carte blanche, CV2, PRISM International, and elsewhere. Her debut collection of poems All Day I Dream About Sirens is forthcoming from Coach House Books in 2019. Find her on Twitter @domenicahope

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan