Some people

they just

   know everything.

Will I have my revenge one day?

Will they all line up

   and beg for forgiveness?

Father and father-like characters,

All the people that despise what I do

Authority figures 
   spitting their bitter advice

Psychologists shaking their heads

The many boys I loved

Who refused to love me back.

What do I need to prove?

This has nothing to do with love.

It’s a very primitive beast

That might push somebody 

   in front of a train.

Or swallow the sun.

Dear wolf,

you just need a she-wolf

to wrestle with,

   don’t you?

If you’re a white pretty girl in Harlem

with a yoga mat protruding from your bag

policemen will come to your rescue

when your metroCard swiping skills fail.

“You’re going crazy, lady

let me open the emergency door!”

Thanks.

The world is at my feet.

How do they know I’m not cheating?

How does anyone know I’m good?

I might be evil.

Is that what you’re trying to find out

when you gaze at me for one full minute

or is it just your “tentacles” stare

the Russian technique

that you’re testing on me 

and her, and her, and her?

When I try to find reasons to feel better

about myself

I think things like

hey!

Some good people are inspired by my work

who cares if grad schools won’t have me

(pompous bastards)

and

So many people love me in the States

my accent and my name are such an advantage.

Totally undeserved:

Thousands of Valentine in Italy.

They all named us after a comic book heroine

a sexy photographer

who has all kinds of surreal erotic encounters.

Nomen Omen?

I take pictures,

But to count the men I slept with

you only need a hand and a half.

I have been a bad girl

or rather just the opposite.

My cheeks need to glow from time to time.

It’s a good thing that nobody really reads my words

so my sex life is only between you and me.

Which can’t be said about my ex’s tweets,

so when he does drugs with her 

(or worse)

everybody knows.

I never thought of him as an exhibitionist

but so many things exist

outside my field of awareness.

Did you know that fungi invented the internet?

thanks to them plants can spy on other plants.

They do exactly what we do.

One of the things 

New Yorkers like to do

at night

is show off their roofs.

The Empire State Building

is somewhere in the distance,

informing you about your

orientation in space.

Which is something that Americans

need to know at all times.

Even when drinking and kissing on roofs.

I guess Romans like roofs too.

I know my father does.

“Do you do this in Italy?”

“Is everyone like you?”

I fled from Italy

but I’m stuck with this job:

the unofficial ambassador 

of the land of Art and Beauty.

Please remember

not to believe a word I say.

I must not forget

that I came home 

just to write my daily words

before heading to the Whitney

to sing a song to a stranger

and donate one of my Loki prints

to another stranger.

So now I have to write

only sixty more words.

Let’s see.

I could tell you that 

in my subway car today there 

was an Italian American policeman

with a belly à la Homer Simpson.

Or that my neighbors 

say hello pretty lady

or hello mama

when I meet them in the elevator.

Only the men of course.

It’s okay to have nothing to say.

the eighties.

if two hands were slapping my face

it would hurt more than one hand.

if two people were chasing me

down a gravel road

where it’s easy to slip and fall

it wouldn’t be worse than one

unless they were 

planning on holding me down

together

after catching me

and pulling my hair

compressing my rib cage

tying my arms to a tree

and then leaving me there

with bleeding knees.

the sound of two voices

laughing at me

would hurt more than one.

I could still be faster

lock the door behind me

go torture the cat.

There are worse things than rats in the subway

if signs saying “please no spitting”

are necessary. 

And an inquisitive rodent

that centuries ago spread the plague in Europe

but that now is probably healthier than your dog

really shouldn’t preoccupy you.

and yes I know about leptospirosis

but bear with me.

Rats are great!

A pet rat once saved a whole family

by running up to his owner’s bedroom at night

when the apartment caught on fire.

I once tried to save two orphan baby rats.
I fed them every four hours.
They made adorable noises.

They died,

nonetheless.

I shouldn’t be staring at a screen.

I should be buying goji berries

and chocolate 

and maybe some real food

but Fairway is too many blocks away

for today’s version of me.

Living in New York

means a great deal of walking.

Yesterday night I was trying to get home

I didn’t know I was crossing into Queens

from Brooklyn

to my left the stereotypical New York view

skyscrapers and water.

What am I doing here?

I love the Chrysler building

with clouds wrapped around it

but beauty is overrated.

Especially a beauty like this,

indifferent like a movie star.

somebody just told me

that my skin looks amazing

for being 31

and,

really,

i will be 32 soon.

i have a foot in the grave

an eye in the sea

a nail in the mail.

my body has definitely started

to rot,

whether you can see that or not

yet.

sylvia plath didn’t live to be my age

and i wonder if i deserve this air

that comes in and out of me

incessantly.

my 7-year-old brother

once just sat at his desk

he left the page blank

“what did you do instead?”

“i thought”

he said.

You need to be subtle

if you want a pregnant woman

not to look like a beached whale

in your pictures.

if you’re not,

please refrain.

It might not entirely be your fault:

maybe that pregnant woman

does feel like a happy beached whale

and her display of total surrender to

a masculine society

the sacrifice of her body on the altar of

the Male American Dream

is indeed a truth you captured

on your Canon 5D.

In that case

congratulations!!!

you’re an Artist!!!

and someone will buy your prints for 10 grand

instead of watching your slideshow on facebook.

Keats died at 25 believing himself a failure
Jane Campion tells us at the end of her movie.
It was okay.
Kind of cheesy really.
What happened to you Jane?
The real Fanny had an unpleasant nose
and didn’t wear those fancy clothes
according to the ambrotype on wikipedia.
I also doubt that in 1818 England
educated women would dare being so rude
or make out in the woods.
Still,
you lonely masochistic friends trying to figure out Love:
please watch it and suffer.
He went to die in Rome
which is the only thing I would
recommend doing
there.

A lost friend of mine

(a quasi-lover actually,

the one who loved the sagas

but couldn’t handle my intensity

and tried to defeat it with hand-knit hats),

he really nailed it once.

‘When you say that you like something

you clearly also don’t like it at the same time’

with which I guess he meant that he could see

that like the Oven Bird I wonder

what to make of a diminished thing.

I still mean it when I say

that you are great.

Language is not accurate

so I won’t shut up. 

At least until next Winter.

The only job 

I seem to

be able

to keep

is

being a Muse.

But beware

if you hire me

I might steal your soul.

My first boyfriend was

a photographer.

Years later I became a photographer

while he stopped making art

completely.

My last husband/friend

was a poet

he still is

I think

but now He writes about Her

while She writes about Him

which doesn’t sound like a very good idea to me.

Anyway I am writing too now,

proving it doesn’t take much.

Women are diabolical creatures

I might have to start dyeing my 

hair 

red.

Every woman

Should get a tattoo

On her right hand,

(Maybe a baby seal

about to be clubbed to death?)

To remind herself

NEVER to sleep

With somebody

Out of pity.

If she does

Sleep with him/her

Ignoring the advice 

Of Norwegian elves

She’ll remember about it

All through a relationship.

Maybe she will

Fall in love with him/her

Things will be good,

Even great,

For a while.

And when they are no more,

All the way through the end,

When people regret

Things not done

Like never making Naan,

She’ll bitterly regret that most 

Shameful

Dishonest

Kindness.

I understand

that De Niro is shooting a movie

next door

but do you

really

have to 

look at me with hate

for stepping on a stick

that was probably left around

by you?

Since you are the factotum

the movie slave

the mopper

the one that no one thanks but that 

gets all the blame if something goes wrong.

You know what,

you do have my sympathy, kid.

Sorry for being noisy

I know your job sucks

and nobody is kind to you.

I think you should consider other possibilities

but I’ll try to smile to you next time.

At the lecture

The speaker was tedious.

Thank God

I was offered a glass of wine.

I drifted.

I imagined somebody’s skin.

I could see it stretch on those elongating bones

As he was growing up in Queens,

A perfectly tuned drum

With riddles on it

There for her to solve

As he slipped out of his case.

The corners of his mouth would rise

But his eyes remain serious

Inexplicably green eyes

On that exotic face.

A frame

So thin,

Yet heavy on top of a woman.

A perfect hug machine

That would gain the approval

Of Temple Grandin.