Live Encounters Poetry & Writing April 2025
Passengers, poems by Edward Caruso.
Passengers
Midday bus, a commuter
on her feet,
red woollen socks to the knees,
I leave her my seat.
‘È tuo … It’s yours.’
Hesitant, she allows me past.
Suddenly, the seat’s … hers.
Beneath via Farini’s porticoes
I wait for the bus to pass.
If only I could see the commuter
through the figures on board
– all standing.
Junctures
A familiar face, we grip hands.
Two blocks away we cross paths again,
my friend with a joint,
eyes wide, a breeziness
in his Ethiopian accent and dreadlocks.
He has no name I remember.
Outside the bar where arrests had been made
the day before, two methamphetamine addicts
share cigarettes, the girl’s face disfigured
and her African companion too wary to smile.
I find some guerrilla art:
pigs with dollar signs;
workers marching with mallets;
a skeletal figure,
skulls in place of kneecaps.
On seeing a deal,
drugs scored by an elderly man,
hair as white as his Louis Vuitton shirt,
mine was a rapid glance
as I traipsed towards Blu’s street art
of devolution from a middle manager
to a chimp-like animal
in front of a TV set.
I return to the bar,
unfamiliar faces and eyes that follow.
The methamphetamine addicts,
disappeared,
their space littered with cigarette butts.
Dusk at 4.30.
A graffito,
Bologninaghetto Antifa.
I drift through traffic.
Bologna, meditated
In conversation you close in,
take a drag from a cigarette.
Surrounded by rare watches and clocks,
you produce a book of antiques whose fine paper
can be smelled at arm’s length.
By San Petronio’s unfinished façade you talk
of Chinese and Greek clients
with half a million euros to spend on timepieces
in moments of financial crises.
On the other side of the centre that morning,
one seldom visited during our walks,
or seen by your clients when they pass through,
I’d floated through shops
run by Pakistanis and Indians,
bars by Africans,
an Italian mother in view,
her two children,
Afro hair, dark skin.
Raindrops and hues,
such as those at Piazza Verdi’s student quarter.
What it could mean to be out at twilight,
each stroll with thoughts to those scholars
who began arriving from afar 900 years ago.
At Santa Maria dei Servi,
mosaic floors,
lamps of glowing intensity,
shadows that augment echoing chants.
A mass begins. At first I’m too withdrawn
to notice half a dozen figures in prayer
led by a Filipino priest.
Views of saints, a Virgin,
seven swords through her heart,
figures on crosses bathed by lamps
and tombs whose occupants from far off I cannot name.
Why I’m here:
Gothic arches and red-brick pillars;
a conversion to aesthetics;
probes into immigrant lives.
Outside, fine rain and gelid breezes.
The next day I’m back with you by San Petronio’s,
sympathising with a new arrival
recounting why he’s forced to plead
for the five euro note you’re holding aloft
to pay for a short black.
© Edward Caruso
Edward Caruso has been published by A Voz Limpia, Australian Multilingual Writing Project, ‘La Bottega della Poesia’ (La Repubblica, Italy), Burrow, Communion, Kalliope X, Mediterranean Poetry, Meniscus, Melbourne Poets Union, n-Scribe, Right Now, P76, StylusLit, TEXT, Unusual Work and Well-Known Corners: Poetry on the Move. His second collection of poems, Blue Milonga, was published by Hybrid Publishers in 2019. In August of that year, he featured on 3CR’s Spoken Word program. Since 2024 he has co-judged the Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize.