Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Three Nov-Dec 2026.
Fantasyland, poems by John Philip Drury.
Getting Lost in the Most Serene Republic
Between a peeling wall and a wide canal, two boys with
wooden swords are dueling. One blade shatters on a jutting
windowsill. The other doesn’t thrust. Without a word, not a
touché of victory, he drops his splintery weapon on the paving
stones. They walk off, and the smiling loser claps, a sound
that echoes down canals and lanes.
I rub my hand along rough stucco walls, letting myself get
lost in broad daylight. Down a long alley, standing with arms
spread wide, a young man reads a tabloid. Upon his head he
balances a platter heaped with fruit. Over the news, a shadow
has fallen.
Fantasyland
Gazing at Giovanni Bellini’s Madonnas,
the loner spots a female saint, a green-eyed
beauty in front of misty Apennine
mountains, crenellated tower, a flock
with their shepherd: a fine place for a picnic
where picturesque delicacies unite.
When he leaves the Accademia, it’s night,
and a police launch like the ones in Donna
Leon’s novels glides by, a photogenic
opportunity for tourists, keen-eyed
to catch clichés but too slow to unlock
their cameras, waiting for vaporetto 1,
an exchange of Ist das unser Boot? and Nein.
Daytrippers leaving, it’s a small town tonight.
From the piazza, he walks beneath the clock
and thinks of “Like a Virgin,” how Madonna
danced in a gondola, shiny and renewed,
and ducked below low bridges in the nick
of 4/4 time. And now he hears the symphonic
slosh of canals and glimpses leonine
doorknobs on shops. He can’t help making snide
reflections on the daily crowds that ignite
his embers of indignation, those prima donnas
whose arias drone. If only he had a Glock
to restore peace in paradise… No luck.
Alone in a bar, drinking a gin-and-tonic,
he hears the juke-box playing “Lady Madonna,”
Paul’s raucous piano rousing his unknown
fantasies. But could he be a knight
whose quest meant murder, with no urge denied
if poison made it secret? Cyanide,
almond-sweet and swiftly lethal. Hemlock,
good enough for Socrates. Aconite
from purple flowers. Classic arsenic,
without the old and tattered lace. Strychnine
from seeds. Nightshade from berries, belladonna.
But no, this culprit swears off hemlock, strychnine,
finds arsenic sickening, cringes at cyanide,
dreads picking aconite or belladonna.
Fleeing from the Mainland as Barbarians Approach
Out of fear, a city emerges from mud. On islands where no
stones are quarried, marble rises, transported on barges
from ransacked churches, built over pilings cut from larch,
oak, alder, spruce, and pine, driven through squishy layers
to a clay substratum. Someone learns how to stand in a boat
and pole it through twisty channels, to jump into brackish
water and push at the hull when it runs aground in the muck.
Someone mixes ground pigments with egg yolks and paints
a tame lion, a dragon speared by a golden-haired saint in armor.
Women perch on rooftop platforms and pull their long hair
through haloes of hatless brims to bleach in the sunlight. Two
strangers board a long black boat after midnight and enter a
cabin that sways with the tides, while a rower stands at the
stern, ducking under low bridges, negotiating corners, never
getting lost in the zigzagging maze of waterways.
© John Philip Drury
John Philip Drury is the author of five full-length poetry collections, most recently The Teller’s Cage: Poems and Imaginary Movies (Able Muse Press, 2024). His first book of narrative nonfiction, Bobby and Carolyn: A Memoir of My Two Mothers, came out from Finishing Line Press in 2024. His awards include an Ingram Merrill Foundation fellowship, two Ohio Arts Council grants, a Pushcart Prize, and the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review. After teaching at the University of Cincinnati for 37 years, he is now an emeritus professor. He and his wife, LaWanda Walters, live in Cincinnati.