Massimo Fantuzzi


Robotics 
The Open Water Swimmer

In lone equivalent succession the somewhat trusted 
soliloquy of core copper pinions stone turning gears
               Inner side, the only side, 

the cadenced pitapatting of gyres rolling pure swirls
               Oiled joint and symmetrical wing

corked airways awake against the city stiff forgotten
               How my ethereal company could feel real,

final no one’s presence on dew caught on riotous lip-sync
               Hollow bones consumed in flying,
               Tongue entangled,

twin grimace underneath the surface twisted into birth
               Breathe. To float until the endlessly

Hydrogen into Helium into Iron slurring waves 
and before collapsing down ripples of solar sure pulls
               I too shall extricate myself from my own skin

primitive tendrils thrust off spines loosened connexions
               Next diagnostic

sometimes felt caressing cleaving almost onto something
               Tell me now, How, I’m stuck.

sometimes not, sometimes disconnected from the multitude.



On Time and Piracy
Got to Keep On
(With bottomless spectacles and a penchant for fine china tea, hands held forward, cupped, forever empty.) 

The seven-thirty-five is late again. Far away, 
must come from far away, and from further, every day.

What history has to offer, she thinks.

               Drunks around me seem
(five to eight)
               a lot more mindful than me
and more purposefully wait.  
Wind, come and lift me, sky’s mouth, shut and ingest me.



60, Isonzo Avenue

Town’s scaffoldings, here we ran for shelter fearful of being awakened. 
Varnished bodies of Viola and Violin 
put on in the miracle of perception,
acoustic box of stairs and windows, complicit smile
fascination’s season of unfractured hopes,
youth.
               #2: [Arms folded, staring at the unconscious man on the bed centre stage. To himself.] 
               Cocooned. That would offer a credible justification. 

Leashed in its reptilian breath the invite, the old choir of stone staircase tingling brass 
hovered in mid-air, lurking gas floating around our mystifying sums. Preys in its bite, 
browses under its itch, 
a tile will brand our intimacy 
the new pure shallow of our bare ankles
sentenced on toes 
in a plea to exit. 
               #1: [Near the window, stage right. Grey luminous sky.] Are you going to shake him out of it, or what? 
               #2: We can’t.
               #1: [Gravely.] Such is our pity.
               #2: Picturesque jottings. 
               #1: Votive fancies and distractions. 
               #2: And this might just be the best place to catch them.

The summer heat around my neighbourhood softens the tarmac and sink her heels 
under her weightless score: no logic nor clear paths in that chessboard dwelling drive into which to pool 
the shackled will of ours. Tied, I, 
this peeling plaster, 
each of my profanities askew
over purpura pillows, damp
on plumbic 
loose scuffles, dawn
on cracked foundations.
Inbound traffic, watch: wants me up licensing call to rent, to pirate.
               #1: Count the furniture.
               #2: His “golden gates”!
               #1: That time was a dream, a simple reference to the four walls of his creation.
               #2: Three three-legged chairs, admittedly the bed could do with a fresh breath of air.
               #1: Incessant rain. Seen it all before.
               #2: I thought you said we were operating on his specifications.
               #1: Sometimes I wonder whether improvement is what he wants from us.
 

Massimo Fantuzzi is a British-Italian dual national born in Milan author of the collection of poems and prose poems Marcia Gioie (Alkalea, 1999). He lives in Leicestershire, where he works in special education. Member of the editorial board at Triggerfish Critical Review, his poems have appeared in Alba, Orbis, The North, The Honest Ulsterman, Abridged, Poetry Salzburg Review, Morphrog, BlazeVox, E·ratio, Bombay Gin, Menacing Hedge, Night Picnic Press, Grey Sparrow Journal, In Parentheses, Berkeley Poetry Review, The Dalhousie Review, and elsewhere. Recently, his work has been included in the anthology edited by Ettore Fobo, Fiori del Caos (Kipple, 2023).

 
 

previous page     contents     next page