Wearing Venice 


I have taken to wearing Venice 
on my wrist. Beads of glass with foil hearts 
dangle from my hand as I move 
around my geometrical landscape 
ruled by science and not art. 
I have crafted a bracelet of glass 
to wear a city water whisks around, 
echoing through airy loggias, 
sloshing on slimed stones, 
reflecting on the ogee-arched windows 
out of which they hung 
corpses and golden flags. 

A world winks on my arm, 
mysterious as San Marco's horses. 
Beads green as the tree in a piazza 
click a rosary of longing 
for improbabilities that rise luminous 
out of the sea. Venice shimmies up my forearm 
and a sighing Venetian crosses a bridge. 
In summer, when gondoliers pole 
black boats down water-canyons, 
pushing down on fathoms of muck, 
you sink into a spell, surging 
around the cloud-colored city 
on this wave and that. 
Then Venice wears you, 
a swinging bauble of glass and light. 

Rachel Dacus








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