{"id":3381,"date":"2015-01-30T17:14:11","date_gmt":"2015-01-30T17:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=3381"},"modified":"2015-04-09T17:45:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T17:45:00","slug":"wooden-mary-meets-veronica-franco-at-venice-marco-polo-airport-a-poem-by-marie-marshall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wooden-mary-meets-veronica-franco-at-venice-marco-polo-airport-a-poem-by-marie-marshall\/","title":{"rendered":"Wooden Mary meets Veronica Franco at Venice Marco Polo Airport. A Poem by Marie Marshall."},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\n 
\n 
\n<\/p>\n

Somewhere in that departure lounge I know as my dreams,
\na long, bizarre night that seems to contain oblique sunlight
\n 
\n\u2013 yes, and in the club lounge shived off by Vaseline glass
\n and by a whispering door, almost ordered with
\n Scandinavian furniture and black leather, long-away
\n framed posters of sixties chic, poseurs picked for
\n their mohair hipsterness and their armcandy chicks \u2013
\n 
\nVeronica Franco\u2019s ghost comes to me, a Versace dress, black,
\nGucci shoes and matching clutchbag more Italian than the Italians,
\nmore Venetian than the Venetians, still standing out from
\nthe upholstery which is damned for its pretentions, her glory
\npiled like Audrey Hepburn\u2019s, her neck with its unrecognizable scent
\nin a double-worship of pearls, the conversation of her prim, sheer legs,
\nher gloves, her slender Rolex worn like it was a Contessa\u2019s heirloom,
\nand when she sits her lower hem is inch-perfect at her knees, her wrist
\nbent to make a show of checking the timepiece,
\nand now comes her almost-plaintive
\nWhy do you call me?<\/em><\/p>\n

Because I love you, <\/em>
\nI say, and that\u2019s the truth, or at least it\u2019s mine;
\nsmart-alecks tell you there\u2019s not one truth, but unique truths
\nfor each of us, filtered like dirty water through a bed of sand
\nand appearing a pure, cold spring to slake our egos; mine, though,
\nto me, is as clear as anything that ever bent a stick, and so it stings,
\nchokes when she replies
\nSo you always say
\n<\/em>
\nSo you always say, and I allow it,<\/em> she says, I have even kissed you as deep
\nas the heave-ho man\u2019s lead that sounds the sea-bottom, I have been as close,
\nas near, as true, as long, as loving, as intimate as any lover, Wooden Mary;
\nI have been your all-night and your good-night at times, and your good-times, <\/em>
\nshe says; I have been<\/em>, she says, tracing her glove-fingers from
\nher pearl hawser to valley the cloth in the centre of her figure,
\ntaking my eyes with them across her geography,
\nmother to your infant hunger.
\n<\/em>
\nShe says more, volumes more, and though each word is
\nan ad hoc prison shank opening bloody mouths in me, I smile
\nto hear them because they are the words of my scripture, and
\nin the midst of them she breaks \u2013 she does! she does! \u2013 and puts
\na hand on mine and rests her forehead on my shoulder, weary,
\noverdone with denial; she crosses her legs, so casual in defeat,
\nand says one phrase more
\nWhy do you make me haunt you?
\n<\/em>
\nThat\u2019s the whole of it. Others don\u2019t walk, we walk in ourselves,
\nwe clothe our own ghosts.<\/p>\n

Her flight is called, Los Angeles or Seoul; I walk her to the door
\nand watch the deliberation of her elegant heels progress
\ninto the sunlight, until she is only a flicker.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/strong>
\n\"Marie<\/a><\/p>\n

Marie Marshall is an Anglo-Scottish author, poet and editor. Her first collection of poems, Naked in the Sea, was published in 2010 and reviewed in Sonnetto Poesia that same year, and her second collection, I am not a fish, in 2013. Since 2005 she has published over two hundred poems, mainly in magazines and anthologies, but the most extraordinary places in which a poem of hers has appeared include on the wall of a caf\u00e9 in Wales, and etched into an African drum at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Her first novel, Lupa, was published in 2012. She is well-known in Scotland for her macabre short stories. Her web site can be found at mairibheag.com. Of writing poetry and sonnets she says, \u201cI did not start writing until 2004, so I am very much a twenty-first century writer. I write anything, any kind of poetry that I feel the urge to tackle \u2015 sonnets included.\u201d<\/p>\n

 
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\neditor@artvilla.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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      Somewhere in that departure lounge I know as my dreams, a long, bizarre night that seems to contain oblique sunlight   \u2013 yes, and in the club lounge shived off by Vaseline glass and by a whispering door, almost ordered with Scandinavian furniture and black leather, long-away framed posters of sixties chic, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2551,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[170,43],"tags":[18,136,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3381"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3381"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4038,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3381\/revisions\/4038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}