Cardarelli ~ Montale ~ Pasolini ~ Pavese ~ Saba ~ Scotellaro ~ Ungaretti

These Italian poets have deepened La Suzanna’s love for Italia and Italian poetry, influencing the poems in Italian Impressions.

The photographs were shot in the streets of Italia by La Suzanna.

Get your copy of Italian Impressions and see excerpts and photography from the book below.

DEDICATO ALL’ITALIA
gli amori e scherzi

roma il sangue
drenched emotions embedded in ancient acid stone
pane and sorrow doused in olive oil

napoli il cuore
filth seeped in tainted morning espresso
slurping vongole sacrificed in unrelenting salted hulls

sicilia l’anima
raging infernos stinking of tender scungelli
il mare stained in vino rosso

venezia la cerimonia
campari tears nel nostro risotto
gialle cries of gioia nella notte

ti amo italia

UNDER THE DISCO BALL Pt. 1  My Inamorato

Once upon a frigid fur filled night 

Under The Disco Ball 

My Inamorato 

rescued my deep wounds of desertion. 

While Drowning in my Cleopatra Bath
      he doused my lonely body with Sage Oil. 

UNDER THE DISCO BALL  Pt. 2 My Wound 

The Mediatrix of all Graces intervenes. 

“Does true love need prayers?” 

In Rumi’s Paradise the hummingbirds defy this madness 

Their sweet sing song rattles in an octave 

♫ Love is never lost in our lush gardens of heaven ♫

VELVETY SMOOTH 

The Pope is prophet-sizing 

Set diamonds in your gold 
Swim in Sri Lankan sapphires 
Devour fresh peasant tomatoes
Hail the beach strewn ruins 

The Eighties in Greece! 

NAPOLI NAPOLI NAPOLI

I taste my pungent essence on him. 
The jagged cliffs and the salty sea.
The beauty and the vile.
The posh and the ghetto. 
The garbage.

I loved his garbage. From the moment I was born. 

SEA OF CASHMERE 

My eyes were wild!
Burning through crusty peasant crowds.
Napoletana rage mistaken for sex appeal.
His eyes were tranquil.
A Siciliano rarity, carrot hair and translucent blue eyes. 

SEX WORKER 

with                        i                      exposing 
throaty voice      bat  eyes      deep cleavage 

                         sex worker  i am 

PART TWO 

we frolick about     seeped in perversions   searching  for escape
white disease of deceit        envelop us in Dante’s fire

DEATH LOVE DEATH LOVE GARLIC AND CHOCOLATE

GREEN SCREEN
(a love poem lost) 

he and me declined into darkness 

grapes we sucked dry
drunk with malaise
our puffy chamber of defloration 

lured every so often evenings 

draped in a translucent green screen 

SALTED HAIR 

Our Hearts attached.
My Salted kinky Hair reeked from Palermo to Venezia. 

Canals soaked in matrimonial hopes. 

Only to be broken by stunning bad breathed pollution. 

TEARS IN THE GHETTO 

The first heartbreak is the worst 

Or is it the best? 

The lingering of vinegar in your veins
The love gone reminding us we are human 

The longing to jump back into
The 16th Century and languish forever  

IN THE SQUARE IN SIENA 

We were wild for survival.
Youth clinging to our bones.
Between noon and three o’clock poses like a marble statue. 

A wasteland of Nothingness.

We drove In the Square In Siena at high noon. 

WHITE BEAN SOUP 

The waft of childhood overwhelms my emotions 
Delicate White Beans soaked in salt water
Nourishment infused in the streams of our blood 
Ho pieta for the wretched
deprived of ripping the crusty tip
of the jaw breaking bread with their teeth
La passeggiata religiosa da l’alimentari

The sordid ménage
Our private biopic 
Mashing and hungering 

TRIANGOLO 

Il nostro Triangolo
A tangled mess
Raw emotion
Stinks of fishmongers breath