Joseph Salvatore Aversano


A HEAD
       for Barbara Marsh


as the snail, its head, shell, and tail
make their way, its way as one

step after another is the
selfsame step

as the spiral
of the shell line

setting off as it arrives


	+


a
lights

onto

this
blade
of

grass
but

not
this
one


nor
this


	+


the wind, but wind

           trying to hold on slipping past and
sometimes through—

                                          and do you too believe
in ghosts? namely the hungry ones

         with bellies like empty begging bowls
to fill the self-serving

self but a low pressure
pocket of air



GLI UFIZZI


but if present
at Botticelli's Birth

of Venus even
if in a landlocked
town in Tuscany

a foaming sea's
shelled breeze


	+


the morning
star is a slant rhyme
with frozen dew

and not to be confused with
the hottest and most inhospitable
of planets named after

the goddess of love


as love is
like all that



YANARDÖNER*


an iridescence
of light
wind petaled

pink a field
is more

than a field



*an iridescent flower (Centaurea Tchihatcheffii) endemic to an area of one square kilometer on the western shores of a lake on the outskirts of Ankara. 



VESUVIUS
               for Peter Yovu
                                                                                     

      I.


Now why would Emily want her own backyard Vesuvius
if not to take the heat off herself?

as if aloof in a contemplative
cratered moon cool?




      II.

a Vesuvius cooled
to fading blue we

do the breathing


to exhale the
furthest stars



NON-FACT-CHECKED TALES OF THE SEA
                                        

foaming at the mouth of
sea say what it will what
the moon wills

with its spittle
all flying

mad as an illu-
mined rock



YVES KLEIN


patents his
own blue

as if blue

is what's
absorbed
and not

reflected



ANKARA, 15 MAY 2023


Something has died,
yes, but has it

ever dreamt
or leapt?


We poke it
for any sign

that it has
in a criss-
crossing out


of butterfly
shadow.



HOW TO DUST THE SUN

a cleaner in the building's
big-windowed entrance
in daylight

repeatedly
swats the light fixture
too high to

reach with a
tired gray rag we

get light



TAO


i.


drops

onto
a

leaf
drops


ii.


the
sound

of
water

falling


water
too


	+


not until

all verse
is hushed

birdcall

Joseph Salvatore Aversano is a native New Yorker now living on the central Anatolian steppe. Some of his most recent poetry has been published in Contemporary Haibun Online, dadakuku, Die Leere Mitte, NOON: journal of the short poem, and Whiptail Journal. He is the founding curator of Half Day Moon Press and editor of Half Day Moon Journal.

 
 

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