Jenny Galton-Fenzi
Piero's Women, Arezzo
(For Jean West )
'You want us to pose? Why us?
We're not your milksop Madonnas.
Here, feel my arm; it thumps dough,
cuffs children, bashes washing
on the stones. See Giulia there?
Her husband came home drunk last Friday;
she hoiked him by the seat of his pants
and dumped him in the midden.
'You'll what? Make us immortal?
Come here, young man, by the window.
Look, there's everything we'll leave behind –
Sandro and Marco rolling in the dust,
little Paolo, my pretty Anna,
the baby in the shade.
'Oh... va be' – we'll pose then.
But look sharp about it;
the sun's already over the church,
and the loaves aren't even in the oven yet.'
We're not your milksop Madonnas.
Here, feel my arm; it thumps dough,
cuffs children, bashes washing
on the stones. See Giulia there?
Her husband came home drunk last Friday;
she hoiked him by the seat of his pants
and dumped him in the midden.
'You'll what? Make us immortal?
Come here, young man, by the window.
Look, there's everything we'll leave behind –
Sandro and Marco rolling in the dust,
little Paolo, my pretty Anna,
the baby in the shade.
'Oh... va be' – we'll pose then.
But look sharp about it;
the sun's already over the church,
and the loaves aren't even in the oven yet.'
Page(s) 7
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The