​Sharing a Cappuccino with You, by StevieB.

​Sharing a Cappuccino with You

after The Angel of the City, by Marino Marini (Italy) 1948
​
Dear Frank,

the Frick’s been redone, doubled,
you can climb that grand marble staircase now
into their bedrooms,
see how they lived with the paintings:

Adelaide’s boudoir,
Pompadour’s cherubs
playing scientist, philosopher, artist.

As for your Horse and Rider,
they’ve cleaned the room,
the light’s brighter, more diffuse.

I had to ask three guards
where it was hanging.
Imagine.

I missed it on my first pass.

But Frank,
it isn’t so spectacular.

I think you were flattering Vincent,
the poor innocent,
making him a dashing soldier,

and Rembrandt over Marini, really?

You snob.

You always did prefer
the lithe boys, the dancers,

not my rough, unruly men:
fat, hairy, balding daddies
I’d gladly take home.

See what I see:

Marini’s man,
round, stocky,
arms flung open,
face to the sky,

joy breaking from him,
a kind of guardian of Venice,

but no horizon, only sky,
enemies falling away, 

his blunt, shameless power
rising,

his ecstasy
carried forward
in the stiff-necked horse.

He could guard my city
any day. 

You must know this:
Peggy would unscrew the penis,
hide it in a drawer
when the nuns passed
on the Grand Canal
for their holy days, 
for blessing by the Patriarch.

Frank,

there’s a café now,
bright as a garden room,
smoky mirrors, lacquered red chairs,
a fresco circling the ceiling, 
inspired by Bellini,
so far from the desert of St. Francis. 

Cutlery and dishes clash,
steam hisses from the espresso machine,
coffee, butter, sugar in the air.

I’d share a cappuccino with you.
We’d sit in that bright, noisy room,
all that warmth and air,

we’d dish,
fast, a little cruel,
a little in love with everything,

feed our hungers,

tell each other
what’s new,
what isn’t,

while the city goes on without you,

and still,
with you in it.  

StevieB.

StevieB. (Stephen McDonnell) writes lyric poems shaped by mystical and erotic experience, where queer eros opens toward the divine. A late-blooming poet, he began in his sixties, apprenticing himself to Rumi, Whitman, O’Hara, Ginsberg, and Anne Carson. He lives as an erotic mystic anchorite among the farmlands of eastern Long Island, watching what reveals itself.