Adam Gianforcaro

Italian Water Garden

Lascivious, isn’t it? The look of it
from the viewing deck like velvet
miniatures, lush with pastel pools
and singing fountains, the lindens
and ivy fresh from pruning. Under
the hush of falsetto fountains
there’s a whispering. Statues calling
your name. Not the frog figure
whistling bridges of water but one
of the baskets overflowing with lime-
stone fruit. You take a piece from the basket
and bite into it, suddenly think your tooth
has chipped on the tough stone,
but it’s crystal-like, this shard in your mouth,
leaving behind the bitter sting of dry wine.
And now, this bitten-into ball,
which was once apple or pear or plum,
fissures and fractures, opens like a geode—
in fact, it could very well be a geode
with its worlds-inside-world wonder:
tiny turquoise pools, jutting jade topiaries,
waves of rippling agate. And about now
you notice another sound, something
big band and brass, so you cup one
half of the fossilized fruit to your ear,
then the other. The music is clearer this way
but still far-away sounding, as if the ensemble
was enclosed inside another stone-
carved orb. And there’s the whispering
again. Your name. A wisp of wind
with yet another clue to decipher.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Adam Gianforcaro is a writer living in Wilmington, Delaware. His poems can be found in Palette Poetry, RHINO, Okay Donkey, No Contact, Poet Lore, The Cincinnati Review miCRo series and elsewhere. He was an Honorable Mention in The Maine Review’s 2021 Embody Awards and a winner of Button Poetry’s 2018 Short Form Contest.