by Nicholas Pagano

The city slept while the air baked orange.
Florence, at midday, was 106 degrees.
I didn’t know how to be a tourist, never learned
the ease required to hold a language always
wilting. The time boiled down
to a search for benches cooled by fountain spray.
When a statue shattered, it was rebuilt
according to custom, the new shape
glowing in the alcove. No one could say why
ruin was ruin, not simply abandon,
if it meant slow wilt, an inward sag
to the cupolas, roads worn blue by wheels
a thousand years. While a crowd watched,
a pig was smoked in the square. Its grease slick
along the pietraforte. Wonder slipped to its knees
everywhere we went.

Nicholas Pagano has previously been published in Chronogram, Field Guide, The Windward Review, and elsewhere. He has work forthcoming in Wild Roof Journal. He lives and writes in New York.