Mantis 22 (Summer 2024)
Disillusion; Dissolution
B.A. Van Sise
Cavalleria Rusticana
Zoppica sulla gamba destra. C’è
una pallottola blu sepolta perché,
afferma, vale la pena morire per lo Stato,
vale la pena provare. ma in questo momento
c’è rumore, rumore profumato,
sulla strada per il teatro dell’opera
verso il quale sta barcollando così velocemente
che non riesco a stargli dietro.
Ha fatto una figlia, e lei
ha fatto un figlio, e
finalmente c’è qualcuno
che vale la pena trascinare per vederlo,
il migliore che sia:
Cavalleria Rusticana. Il grande vanto
dei brutti tempi: che tutto questo è in qualche modo
nobile, che puoi mettere un bambino
in un papillon e che il mondo intero
si inchinerà mentre abbatti una pergola di papponi,
mondane, ladruncoli, sodomiti, uomini
mezzosepolti sotterrandosi nelle pattumiere
o mendicando mentre passi, per vedere la storia
di quando gli uomini erano uomini, e le donne
erano donne, e tutti erano italiani.
Non ci sono posti peggiori del tuo,
l’angolo in fondo all’ultima fila,
e lui si strofina la gamba, finalmente felice
di mettere il passato davanti a sé,
di sedersi in tempi migliori, di sapere
che un mondo si chiude quando si apre un sipario.
Rustic Chivalry
He limps on his right leg. There’s
a blue bullet buried in it because,
he states, The State is worth dying for,
worth trying for, but right now
there’s noise, perfumed noise,
on the way to the opera house
to which he is wobbling so fast
that I cannot keep up.
He made a daughter, and she
made a son, and
finally there is
someone worth dragging to see it,
it, the best one it is:
Cavalleria Rusticana. The big boast
of bad times: that all of this is somehow
noble, that you can put a little boy
in a bow tie and that the whole world will bow
as you barrel down a bowery of pimps,
tricks, muggers, buggerers, half-buried
men burying themselves in garbage bins
or begging as you go past to see the story
of when men were men, and women
were women, and everyone was Italian.
There are no worse seats than yours,
the back corner of the back row,
and he rubs his leg, finally happy
to put the past ahead of him, to
sit in better times, to know
a world closes when a curtain opens.
Translated by Eleanora Foglia
B.A. VAN SISE is an author and photographic artist focused on the intersection between language and the visual image. He is the author of three monographs: the visual poetry anthology Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry, Invited to Life: After the Holocaust, and the upcoming On the National Language: The Poetry of America’s Endangered Tongues. He has previously been featured in 254 Contributors solo exhibitions at the Center for Creative Photography, the Woody Guthrie Center, the Rockefeller Arts Center, the Center for Jewish History and the Museum of Jewish Heritage. He has been a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize, the Travel Media Awards for feature writing, and the Meitar Award for Excellence in Photography. He is a 2022 New York State Council on the Arts Fellow in Photography, a Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation grant recipient, a Prix de la Photographie Paris award-winner, a winner of the Colonel Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards and the Lascaux Prize for Nonfiction, and an Independent Book Publishers Awards gold medalist. The son of an Italian mother of Tunisian and Libyan descent, he lives in New York City.
ELEONORA FOGLIA holds a classical studies degree, is currently an international jurisprudence student at the University of Naples, and is the poet, B.A. Van Sise’s long-suffering niece.