VENICE SUN

by Alejandro Escudé

Venice has finally revealed the details for its entrance fee, making it the first city in the world to charge daytripper visitors. Starting in spring 2024, visitors to the floating city will have to pay 5 euros ($5.40) to enter on peak days if they’re not staying the night. But this isn’t a permanent move yet – the Venice authorities have committed to a 30-day “experiment.” —CNN, September 13, 2023

When you first get there—

Your ocean liner looms over 

The island city and you spot

The ancient roofs and the plazas,

The gryphons, and the gold-fringed

Streets, both real and imagined,

And the people on the cruise

Get off onto the bridges, you 

Smell the canals—leafy, oily, 

And the mask you purchase is 

Expensive, the plague doctor,

And you drink a cold beer

And you eat in a restaurant

Down a corridor, and you think

Of the writing you should be

Doing, and every corner brings 

That lifelong, exquisite guilt, 

And you sidle through crowds

And get too hot and walk

Out too far, where there are

Fewer people, only sunlight

Splashing against a cracked wall.

And you are in Venice, but

At night, it’s Euro-urban scary, 

And you’re alone and lost

And you almost miss the boat

Though the boat is docked close.

You take the tender back 

To the pastel-colored cake-boat

That is every cruise and you 

Go to the ship’s casino and sit at

The red neon bar, and you forget

That you were ever in Venice

And it’s almost twenty years

Later and you learn that now

Venice wants to charge a fee

Like an amusement park, and

It makes you sad to look at 

Your mask, hanging on your

Wall, remembering the latest 

Plague. But it makes you 

Even sadder to learn there

Will be days in that city

Where it’s not advised 

That you visit because of

Crowds. And you think:

I’d go anyway. I’d go

Right now just to smell

Those canals again. Just 

To see that palace, fringed

In gold. To feel that heavy,

Doge’s sun like one coin

Of the two that sit upon 

My aging poet’s eyes. 

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

WISH-WASH

by Charlotte Innes

The city’s all a-wash with rain,
wish-wash the water goes,
down gutters, litter-clogged, down drains
and pipes—and, there they blow,
the coffee lids, a sock, a cane,
some cartons, butts, a picture frame
bobbing atop the flow.

Post-drought, the rain’s a candy store
(including crap), the drub
of drops on my umbrella or
green shoots of grass that mob
an arid patch or crack. But water’s
driven baby seals ashore
(the warming-ocean “blob”),

and heat and rain together rob
our coastal townships more
and more, as seaside cliff-tops drop
away. Some call it “war,”
as if some ancient pagan god
like Zeus, enraged by hubris, were lobbing
bolts of shock and awe,

to lift the ocean up nine feet,
(the forecast), flood our Basin,
disappear our beaches, shear
the edges off our nation.
Predictive climate maps delete
whole countries, tracking Earth’s defeat,
shutting down salvation.

But gentle rain tonight prolongs
my day, and keeps at bay
the Marshall Islands, Venice, their long
drowning—despair at how to stay
alert to horror, play and song,
to rain and grass, to wrongs and wrong,
to more than I can say.

Charlotte Innes is the author of Descanso Drive (Kelsay Books, 2017), a first book of poems, and two chapbooks, Licking the Serpent (2011) and Reading Ruskin in Los Angeles (2009), both with Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, The Sewanee Review, Tampa Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Rattle. She has written on literary topics for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation and other publications.  

EVENING IN VENICE

by Allene Nichols




The water is rising.
The waiter with the red-checked shirt,
eyes darting, is ready to run.
But there is time for red wine,

baccala’ mantecata, and tiramisu.
There is time as the water
laps at our feet
and the sky scowls.

The boat shies nervously against the pier.
Our glasses clink too loudly.
Our laughter echoes
high and clear
like struck porcelain.

We’ve wept over the skeletons
of churches and museums.
St. Mark’s floor is covered
with mud. The Doge’s palace
is listing dangerously.

The statues, paintings, and friezes
are safe in Rome,
But we will never step here again.
No weeping now, though our cheeks are wet
and our eyes bright.

Clowns, wits, and bon vivants
do their best,
but their eyes drift back
to the sinking buildings
and a shadow passes
over their faces.

The air is thick with mosquitos.
Our clothing clings to us.
The smell of decay,
Held at bay for centuries,
creeps in from the alleyways.
The city, empty except for us,
echoes eerily.

All is lost and nothing is lost.
The world will go on.
The waiter cranks an old phonograph.
Vivaldi strains against the silence,
almost lost in it.

We dance as the fish swim at our ankles.
The sun glowers on the horizon.

Allene Nichols lives in Dallas, Texas, where she teaches at Richland College and at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Veils, Halos, and Shackles, and Impossible Archetype. Her poem, “Queer Salt,” was a 2017 winner of OUTSpoken’s creative writing contest.

BEADED BOUNTY

by Catherine Wald

“Much of the beadwork featured in many pieces — from Ka’igwu moccasins to a Ute tobacco bag — used tiny glass seed beads from Venice, Italy, acquired through trade with Europeans.” —Seattle Times review (February 20, 2015) of “Indigenous Beauty”  at the Seattle Museum of Art.

Fingertips clasping confetti colors, I grasp
                  glass beads of Venice to recount ravens,
                                    superimpose suns and hawks. In shades of
                                                      Roman frescoes, my fables spin out:
                                                                        breathless as clouds, self-contained as cacti.

Plunder purchased from ghost-people, even in service
                  of beauty, of love, comes at a cost I can't fathom as I
                                    caress and pierce these tiny hulks, adorn
                                                      my childrens’ tunics with their shimmer.

As I bead, prairies are denuded, tents torched.
                  As I braid, Armageddons are prophesied and fulfilled.
                                    As I stitch, our love affair with earth is defiled by
                                                      notions of ownership; our sons succumb to
                                                                        microbes; our daughters birth monkeys;
                                                                                          our rivers run black, then dry.

Catherine Wald's books include poetry (Distant, burned-out stars, Finishing Line Press, 2011), nonfiction (The Resilient Writer: Stories of Rejection and Triumph From 23 Top Authors, Persea Books, 2005) and a translation from French of Valery Larbaud’s Childish Things (Sun & Moon Press). Her poems have been published in American Journal of Nursing, Buddhist Poetry Review, Chronogram, Exit 13, Friends Journal, Jewish Literary Journal, The New Poet, Society of Classical Poets, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly and Westchester Review.