Ero corpo di bimba esile e panica
corrucciavo sopracciglia
senza tolleranza
nascondendo in fondo agli occhi
abissi imperscrutabili.
Divenni la piccola donna saggia
treccine da africana sulla testa
ideali altissimi e mente frenetica.
Quando la ferita suppurò mi dissi
che potevo guarire i lembi, riunire le sponde
delle tante vite frastagliate che mi portavo dentro.
Sotto la tazzina da caffè rovesciata
un destino si compie.
Apro la finestra, fuori piove.
30 Agosto 2025
________________________________________________________________________
I was the body of a slender, panicked child
I frowned
without tolerance
hiding in the depths of my eyes
unfathomable abysses.
I became the wise little woman
African braids on my head
high ideals and a frenetic mind.
When the wound festered, I told myself
that I could heal the edges, reunite the shores
of the many jagged lives I carried within me.
Under the overturned coffee cup
a destiny is fulfilled.
I open the window, it’s raining outside.
August 30, 2025
Indran Amirthanayagam writes poetry in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He is the author of thirty one books of poetry and poetry in translation, including White Space Sonnets (Sarasavi, 2025) - Winner of Sri Lanka's State Literary Award in 2026 - Seer (Hanging Loose Press, 2024), The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil, 2024), Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia, Blue Window (Dialogos Books) The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press 2020),Coconuts on Mars (Paperwall, 2019), Uncivil War (Mawenzi House (formerly TSAR), Canada, 2013), and the Paterson Prize-winning The Elephants of Reckoning (Hanging Loose, 1993). Amirthanayagam is a 2020 Foundation for Contemporary Arts fellow in poetry, and a past fellow of the New York Foundation for the Arts, the US/Mexico Fund for Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions (www.beltwayeditions.com), edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly; co-curates the reading series Beltway Cafe at the M.L.K. He writes a substack at indranmx.substack.com
Born in Rome in 1979. writer, poet, and painter Ilaria Giovinazzo holds a degree in literature, is an anthropologist and scholar of comparative religions. Teaches literature in high schools. She has published the following novels Lost Souls (Effedue, 2001), I can't let you go away (Prospettiva, 2005), Women of destiny (Besa, 2007) and the poetry collections Like a lotus flower (Ensemble, 2020), The simmetry of the bodies (Ensemble, 2021), The religion of beauty (PeQuod, 2023). In 2022 she also published the illustrated book for children Life. Ten important things (Fuorilinea) and in 2023 she edited the plaquette, published by Ensemble, of the event “Poetic symphonies concert for strings and winds” conceived and directed by her. She translated from English the poems of the Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded in the volume Pure Light. Mystical songs of Kashmiri tantrism (Jouvence 2024). Her poems have been published in anthologies, specialized magazines and literary blogs (De sur a sur, Atelier, Metaphorica, Transiti Poetici, Formafluens, Inverso Giornale di Poesia, La Bottega della Poesia de La Repubblica, Centro Cultural Tina Modotti). She has received awards, mentions and honorable mentions in various competitions, including the Ossi di seppia International Prize for Unpublished Poetry, the L’Arte in versi Prize and the Lorenzo Montano Prize. She has been translated into English, Spanish, Arabic, Bengali and Kannada. She lives and works in the Sabine hills.