Featured Contributor ~ Poetry
Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English. His work has appeared in over 200 literary journals from 17 countries. His fifth collection, titled The Secret Of Archery, was published in 2019 by Greenwich Exchange (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.
Story Of A Loser
The crumpled trench coat was hanging on the clothes tree;
the rain-streaked panes were letting in some light, no view.
It had been a frantic day, now he was staring at the embers,
sunk in the armchair, trying to make his bad blood cool off.
Miry lug sole footprints smudged the terracotta pavement,
marked a track from the threshold straight to the fireside.
There was nothing he wanted to think about or wished,
nothing but crackle counterpointing the chilly silence,
among which the patter on the glass barely emerged.
Like with the exhausted legs, weighed down and sore,
he’d abandoned all ambitions, dropped the will to fight.
All he’d been or he’d done was scattered behind by then,
today on top of tomorrow, strewn with snips of yesterday.
All pell-mell, without the slightest intention of tidying it up,
except for the lived-in slicker precipitously hung out to dry.
Despite the proximity of the hearth, his hands were numb;
only sere, darkened images were popping into his head.
He couldn’t possibly imagine he would soon go blind,
blind because of too much exposure to the afterglow,
nor the longest journey he’d ever go on had just begun.
I can recall each detail, yet I find it hard to utter his name.
In The Blizzard
Can you remember when we spent days on end
searching for a reason inside all kinds of storms?
Whether rain or snow it didn’t make a difference,
nor did it lightning or thunder, freezing fog or hail.
So now that a mocking fate has me spending more
in a refuge at a high pass in the middle of nowhere,
I’m not going to waste my time in the cozy warmth
emitted from the tiles of an old decorated stove,
reading and drinking coffees one after the other.
There will be plenty of empty days for that.
I’m going to dare the raging blizzard instead.
That little nameless something that’s still missing
may be right out there awaiting in the whiteout,
and this one my very last chance to ever find it
A Triad Of Visions
It doesn’t fear the excess of heat,
a flower bloomed too soon
deceived by the sun.
It fears the cold, and the wind,
and unsought solitude.
It fears to go limp unpicked.
A scratchless child,
I saw a bolide
blazing through the dark.
I followed its trail across nowhere,
only to find myself exactly where I’d left,
a branded man.
Back in the folds of time,
at the core of the African cradle,
hominids rose and challenged a world
ruled by absentee gods.
Their progeny strives against the vacuum
nature is paving the way to.