The Museum of Gug

Mix it yourself, Peggy G. suggests, drip it
until you’re depressed or priapic,
whichever Guggenheim mold you want to magic.
The fields ripple off the mountains

to replace Venice in gobby shapes,
the ones the Arps ape, and vino juts its stakes
out of that green, with second thoughts about growing,
discouraged by the Bosch-ish insects.

Too little art works its way into time Italicized.
The palms post-Verona from this perspective droop.
Still the Alps alp-it-up along Como’s shores
where marble shades into men who stand and stand and stand.

Let none of them smile about it, laughter is out.
O sole mio regards the no-swimsuit-tops-off anywhere
as scenery along the road that runs from Rome
to where the roads all snap back.

Beside the stone of a birdbath or better,
the laundry bin where women washed babies
as well as bibs, and men, shot in some war
that war-like people who live in mountains enjoy,

dressed their wounds, this watery stone fills
with afternoon light until a hiker descends
to the spot beside the spigot that moss covers
with its single-celled dark, in awe.

About the author

Terese Svoboda, author of Bohemian Girl,  has always wanted to travel to Český Krumlov, home of the Literary Bohemian, but she's been busy writing 19…

Read the full bio

Issue 15 · June 2012

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