Live Encounters Poetry & Writing September 2025
Rom, poems by Edward Caruso.
Rom
A worn handkerchief over the hair,
she emerges, hand outstretched,
thrusting a baby into my mid-section,
another hand searching for my wallet.
Her resemblance to the farmhands of old.
As I withdraw from the baby against my chest
among traffic that contains us,
she who is closest to me,
my wallet still in place.
Art critic, Assisi earthquakes,
September ’97
Those remaining friends who gather.
The critic looks beyond,
sees swirls of dust
invading the upper basilica of St Francis
at the time of the tremors.
He murmurs:
Any destroyed work of Giotto’s is a house torn down.
Our children gazing at photos of lost works.
What if the quakes had taken their lives?
He nestles in his pillows,
forgets to close his eyes and breathes no more.
Odysseus 2000
Shadows of shortening days,
rainfall bathing the face and its emotions.
In this interlude, Calabrian wine,
coastlines adrift beneath the Pleiades,
wild sage and salt.
Once beyond familiar coasts,
libations to the gods speed me on.
Refinement
The divorcee mutters friendships are not free,
thumbs fashion magazines,
her nightly ostentation at strada Cavour remembered
for the most expensive attire
A lunchtime appearance
on the Teatro Reggio’s balcony, a soprano,
flowing black dress,
sings to the crowd,
the street filling with her voice
Beneath, the divorcee trembles
Verdi’s ‘Sempre libera’ her anguish,
her torment, what she feels next
the release she labels determination.
Pompeii
Supine nymphs, priapic statues.
How many couples have taken refuge here?
How many have felt, groped, pashed,
argued and made up in this hidden courtyard?
We undress.
Rain beats against stone and terracotta roofs.
We are a couple among ruins, making love.
© 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. In August 2019, he featured on 3CR’s Spoken Word program. Since 2024 he has co-judged the Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize. In 2025, his third collection of poems, What Distance Means, was published by Hybrid Publishers.