Make Believe
We made a temporary home just up the hill from the Colosseum,
walked the dusty track of ancient chariots, ate as if our lives depended on it,
all manner of pasta with clams, beef, bacon, and lobster, Chianti from a basket-
bottomed bottle, and water, still, or gassed, from vessels of tall green glass.
We made coffee in a silver device screwed together at the center,
only room for one at a time, and sat drinking it looking out across rooftops
over edifices tinged terracotta and sunflower, the shade of the paintings
still gracing the tomb walls within the catacombs of San Sebastian.
We made a nuclear quartet again, the pieces of our family puzzle
joining as we walked labyrinthine streets in search of sights
we’d seen by day but hoped to see again at night, dogged by exhaustion
and the ever-present exhaust from the tailpipes of scooters and tiny cars.
We made good time on foot, crossing to the seedy side of Rome
where street vendors sold coiled scarves with the same ten patterns,
red with white polka dots, paisley blue, repeating table after table, as if
to break us down incrementally, to make us say Enough already, I’ll take one.
We made reservations without plans, open to seeing what we’d see,
but then, amidst the ruinous present, couldn’t help but study the map,
searching for how it could take us to the Mouth of Truth, or the secret keyhole
of the Knights of Malta beside Santa Sabina church atop the Aventine Hill.
We made tourist mistakes, trying to wave a bus down but only managing to bid
the driver buongiorno, then hopping on the wrong bus as it hurtled past the pyramid
beside the Protestant cemetery we’d been aiming for, so that we had to disembark
and take a subway back to where we’d missed Keats and Shelley’s bones.
Three out of four of us took a plane home, but we left our oldest child by the gate
to make her way to another country as we crossed through secure borders
and spent the last of our brightly colored bills on lemon-tinged olive oil and wine.
We’d made it seem as if she hadn’t grown up and away, as if we had the right
to chide about bedtimes and packing. We even made believe that we were just
on holiday, not running from future ghosts, and all those broken urns and columns
of curling travertine leaves let us think we were right, that the past can be
recovered from. That slaves didn’t turn every cog and push every oxen,
that good fences make good neighbors, that we’d come back again someday,
would stand again under domed ceilings painted with stars, would even be able
to preserve what we have right now. A pretense that every day isn’t like being
raised on a wooden elevator into a cheering throng who hope to see you bleed.
How, Drinking One Monday in Massachusetts, I Remembered What I Felt
on the Carrer de Mallorca in Spain One Long-Ago Winter
The nickel-sized portal at the mouth of a bottle of beer
provides passage into another world, triggering spirit,
and in the time it takes for fruit to reach perfection without
tipping into overripe, the space between the trip and the fall,
I’m back in Barcelona, where Gaudi’s
architecture was an undoing in its doing,
the way the hands of someone desired can
untie deep knots you didn’t know were there.
As I stood looking up at the Basílica de la Sagrada Família,
the bag of oranges in my fist the only thing tethering me
to my friend (we had said we’d share them, and it was my turn
to swing the netted sack as we walked along), questions fell away.
Later, on the train to Toledo, the feeling of faith followed
me, as if it were there to stay. I don’t know when
it left, but what saddens me most is that I didn’t
immediately notice that it was gone.
Oh, Awe, oh God, why can’t you be undeniable, like gravity?
Why must your constancy be like my old flower press,
its screws rusted wings, and inside, after a season, the same
brown dust, smaller, and duller, than before?
BIO: Rebecca Hart Olander holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry has appeared recently in Ilanot Review, Mom Egg Review, Plath Poetry Project, Radar Poetry, Virga Magazine, and Yemassee Journal, among others, and her critical work has been published in Rain Taxi Review of Books, Solstice Literary Magazine, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Collaborative work made with Elizabeth Paul is forthcoming in Duende and They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence Press). She was the winner of the Women’s National Book Association poetry contest and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Rebecca lives in Western Massachusetts where she teaches writing at Westfield State University and is the editor and director of Perugia Press. You can find her at rebeccahartolander.com.
Wanderlust 