I am in Rome the Jupiter of cities I only mate with gods huge limbs with straining finger tips touch the backbone of the universe I am a virgin block of stone that rolls from your feet like mountain mist we are safer than we think
like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle something will make you lose your health you’ll break a dozen ribs or more in a garden tending flowers which for a time will be your home
I’m a rock and every wound a cave I saw the red-hot city a fossil scorpion with a sting of stone people stood like blocks chipping away their pocketknives: first names (cut) on a rock breaking your idiot heart
men die like nouns the parenthesis is a type of fireplace (my father is not depressed) what if language is not communication a conversation with dirt I’ve been dead for hours
broken like a line in poetry breaks the windows of my poetry are wide open on the boulevards the object of this poem is to fail opening a door is narrative looking through a window is not
that day your head like a ship with full freight pushing a green roll-away bed over pack your bags or just send for your things
that opened the shadows onto a tired god sick with love upon a river, field or in my room
on your shoulders in perfume of pain candles fed the holy forests I am weak and must be tortured for earth and wind can match a god
like some Chaldean god smiling in his beard I unearthed what seemed like the jawbone of a god high in the air where seemed to be his head a crown of dust
like angels with one wing to reach their heaven wherever you stand in ancient Rome there is a shadow sunshine sending its remains we pray to this abandoned universe garments of the mighty flung away (I dreamed an angel came late to us)
that built them to crumble walls, from its looted stones defend the refuge of its heirlooms I use a chessboard for a pillow to the unlearned it is barbarian
John Paul Calavitta received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington, Seattle, where he is currently finishing his PhD in Eco-criticism. “Tomorrow I Will Be in Rome,” the poem not the sequence, has previously appeared as part of the Elgin Pop-Up Poetry Project.