Page 10 - January 2021

PINA PICCOLO

Pina Piccolo is a poet and editor From Berkeley,
California and lives in Imola

October Dream of Gathering

And we gathered darkness by the basketful
Plucking the twisted fruit from fatigued branches

We were caught with our snouts rooting for tubers
As destruction besieged the canopy

When the elements, at long last, turned against us
We couldn’t use words as shields

Nor could our tools expand
Our neural net fast enough.

All we could do was stare
the bear in the eye

hoping for a truce

a trace of mercy.

Language

It hardened like amber
Trapping the meaning

And the silence
And the intonation
When the earth no longer received it
And the wind wouldn’t carry it
And the species couldn’t bear its weight
It got stuck there with a flea
To precede the clay tablet
And to follow the lung fish fossil
Like an outgrown organ
To be hurled into the record
of future dismay

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litterateur 0 january 2021