English translation by Pina Piccolo. Cover art: Photo of the ruins of the church of Salaparuta, courtesy of Modio Media.
Mother stars
The stars could see us before
we were on earth –
and even later, when we were dust
on our way back.
In silence they inhabited extinct orbits,
adorned with creation.
They were mingled with mothers’ eyes,
when nights were still toddlers
on an unmade bed,
two slippers on a full moon.
Gaza
The gasoline of war ignited
the promise, no peace table
under the detained sky, digging tunnels
between the decades and an unattended coffin.
The forgotten were too low when they were put out
their names shapeless under the mounds of houses
bodies bombarded by perimeters of pride,
Then the limits of the world exploded
and nothing remained of the announced gamble:
A beam, two bowls, a glassless frame
the luggage of a land that no longer has legs
to hope.
Sandwich crust
He loved sandwich crust
It circled around the stuffed heart,
hunger’s most common prey.
He felt the extremity of things
melt in his mouth – boundaries
liquified as he chewed on their walls.
He gobbled it down- all the way down
and made each completed bite
the outcast, the least, the oppressed.
Each piece regained meaning,
each body its center.
He then reached the part with the most stuffing
but his struggle was already sated:
he observed a moment of justice
for suburban disagreements.
The yellow traffic light
The cab was early,
no one had booked it.
Yellow traffic lights
– flashing suns in the night –
and empty crosswalks
scarfless and hatless.
At the end of the ride he got to
where he wanted, without knowing
where he was.
The journey was the street signs
he was seeking.
An infinite point
The round light caught us in the road
electrifying our sparks.
It also caught us afterwards,
when we had turned into flashlights
chasing the play of shadows.
It caught us beyond the fossil heat
of our breaths,
when we were exiled
to an infinite point.
Lady truth
Lady Truth knocked on the door.
She was nimble, made up,
wore stiletto heels
that pierced the floor.
She said nothing
batted her eyelashes
twirled her hair
waving in front of my face
the loveliness of the gesture.
I did not let her in.
I was still wearing
my pajamas
and – in my eyes –
the most unattainable of dreams.
Valeria Di Felice (Nereto 1984) is the founder of Di Felice Edizioni press, which she launched in 2010 at the age of 26. She has published the following poetry collections: L’antiriva (2014), Attese (2016) and Il battente della felicità (2018, second edition 2019). Her poems have been published in Morocco (2012), the United Arab Emirates (2015), Romania (2016 and 2022), Palestine and Jordan (2017), Tunisia (2020), the Netherlands (2021), and Spain (2021).
In 2016 she edited the poetry anthology The Great Mother. Sixty Contemporary Poets on the Mother, in 2017 the critical and poetic miscellany High on Whirlpools, and in 2019 the volume Antonio Camaioni. In the Order of Chaos.
In 2018, in collaboration with Antonella Perlino, she translated Moroccan writer Fatiha Morchid’s book of short stories Love Is Not Enough. In 2023, she was the translator and editor of the first Italian edition of Countess Anna De Brémont’s poetry collection Sonnets and Love Poems.
