Niccolò Fantin

Lovely

Between vertebrae and shoulder blades, charcoal
seeps, steel-cold needle, intramuscular. It is
winter amidst the ivy of your fingers and
the hedges overgrowing my temples.
I trained for this, on silk futons and creaking
chairs. I memorized the rhythm of feeding
time. But still I starve it, I retreat my hand,
watch this darkness, this tar-coated raven,
writhe, from the call of its intestines. Yet
somehow its pain quenches me, it vivifies me.
I find the purpose for life in the agonizing death
of a portion of myself, of the fragments of met
hat somehow still resemble you.”

Swallow

The fingers of the vineyard
wrapped around the frame:
grape vines and ivy,
gentle,
in their suffocating embrace.
I took the body,
the ramshackle patchwork of tissue and bone,
all the way to the orchard. Down the granite steps,
I trailed blood. Over clovers
and the straw of dandelions.

I could have left it there, to rot,
to burst with the crowding of life
that exudes from death itself. And yet,
I had to give it back, to the ground,
to the earth: call it pity, call it solidarity.
With dirt under my fingernails
I got up and prayed, unclean, the stars
were absent that night, I prayed
for someone to have the same compassion.

Niccolò Fantin is an aspiring writer with a passion for poetry and journalism, a recent college graduate that just embarked on a Master’s degree in human rights and overall literature fanatic. He has self-published, for personal pleasure, his first poetry collection “Ephemeral Souls Fade in the Summer” last year.