Quadrato di Villafranca o Esercitazione di tiro (Shooting Practice), by Maureen Alsop

Quadrato di Villafranca o Esercitazione di tiro, by Giovanni Fattori (Italy) 1880.

Quadrato di Villafranca o Esercitazione di tiro (Shooting Practice)

Above the mapping you stood naming the plateaus, the ravines, the wasted arrows.

Loss never ended with the end of the battle.

We undressed and mislabelled our bodies as a spell for goodbye, spread your
charts—evergreen’s deep ambrosia across the hill.   Small sun lanterns measured

our sleep--the sleep of a lover’s hand curled into a lover’s hand, your hair entwined in
her hair, legs firm entanglement in legs—your head on my lap, you listened to the
nightwind batting at moths, the bullfrog’s thrum and blurry mopoke’s howl among the
melaleuca.

Looking through blades of grass, not looking with your eyes, as you crossed the plains

you said "I know you."

Maureen Alsop
​
Maureen Alsop, PhD is the author of four collections of poetry: Apparition Wren, Mantic, Later Knives & Trees and Mirror Inside Coffin. Her poems have been published widely including AGNI, Kenyon Review, Blackbird, and other; she is the recipient of several poetry prizes including Harpur Palate's Milton Kessler Memorial Award, and the Frances Locke Memorial Award.

This poem was written through a collective, collaborative engagement with writers Heather Bryant, Christina Cook, Marcia LeBeau.