Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy (Italian Poetry in Translation Book 2)

Nesting Egg Words

Trash-words mud
mire manure ferment
scorching in the bowels
of a sunken world.
Ancient words push,
forgotten, erased
rejected: words spurned,
murmured.
I goat snake toad
bird beast lone
fox, ancient words
I carry inside, I belly-button
hair feathers molted skin,
dirty words.
Earth-words, cursed
words that water
doesn’t rinse, oil doesn’t soften
or sweeten,
sore-words, ulcers,
labor-pain-words,
deep words, leather,
heart flesh,