Poetry by Vito Bonito

*

—dying
one goes fracturing

no dark no flickering

sharp pains no one know…

no one speaks
dark pupils
in the sky of stars…

no one we can make to flower…—

i thought you wanted to say
things to make me to say again…

but nothing moves for any reason
nothing dies
nor remains alive

*

as a little girl
sitting in blood
i wanted to know
what remains of the dead

to the little hands that I kill
now i ask

what of me remains
what doesn’t come back
ever again

*

the children go dead small
like empty flames
like nothing
ever happened

the children were dreamed
by those who don’t have them
by those who lost
them

if i am not
dreamed so no one
had me

no one lost

*

children have weak hearts
waiting makes blood

in cold water
they are spread out

in cold water
they sleep without little hands

a weak heart
one cannot trust it

*

i want her buried
in a little wedding dress

don’t try to relight her

the wind won’t return

*

has to happen

where nothing
without pain

but don’t finish

where nothing
ignites the flower

then the heart comes down

mother’s milk
keep drinking it

melt us inside
promises of love

your caramels of blood

*

children flower dogs

angelic the cane flutters
the dogs
you make soap

the coddled dogs

on the small boat
chrome-plated babies

on the leash

blessed

*

grown-ups make babies-thereinside
too much little ones

so they-thereinside
die
too soon

no one is ever big
enough
to stay alive

*

little people of blood
breathe badly

flowers alive
without air

the sun shakes them
all the way to the end

mehr licht
mehr nicht

*

like this you’re born
the first time

if you sell your blood

like this you can stay
alive

hold it in your arms
your hair

*

closed in silence

they didn’t suffer

look at the hands
look at them without

one goes into the sky
a little at a time

*

there are people with thereinsides of blood
that we are born from

and then they die us flat
so we come out of us

in the world of transparent dust
the paper dolls
hold each other’s hands

*

the eyes have arrived!

now i take up death
and i see
electric voices

it no longer matters
how much I believe in release

the statuettes
have awoken

*

they put me to grow inside
a baby in the living belly

to me they said
you don’t have to eat
the egg-baby

the things missing inside
the egg breaks

makes the smell of angels
and you can’t use it

they mustn’t come out
from the head
***************the colors

Bios

Vito Bonito

Vito M. Bonito (b. Foggia, Italy, 1963) lives and works in Bologna, Italy. He has published books of poetry including Luce eterna (Galerie Bordas Venezia, 2012), Fioritura del sangue (Perrone, 2010), Sidereus Nuncius (Grafiche Fioroni, 2009), La vita inferiore (Donzelli, 2004), Campo degli orfani (Book, 2000), and A distanza di neve (Book, 1997). He has also written criticism featured in Le parole e le ore. Gli orologi barocchi: antologia poetica del Seicento, (Sellerio, 1996); L’occhio del tempo. L’orologio barocco tra letteratura, scienza ed emblematica (Clueb, 1995); Il gelo e lo sguardo. La poesia di Cosimo Ortesta e Valerio Magrelli (Clueb, 1996); Il canto della crisalide. Poesia e orfanità (Clueb, 1999); and Pascoli, (Liguori, 2007). He has written essays on Montale, Beckett, Artaud, De Signoribus, and Aristakisyan.

Allison Grimaldi-Donahue

Allison Grimaldi-Donahue (b. Middletown, CT, 1984) lives and works in Bologna, Italy. Her work has appeared in The New Inquiry, The American Reader, Metatron, tNY Press EEEL, Lunch Ticket, Dead King Magazine,  and Cosmonauts Avenue. Her essays and reviews appear regularly on the American Literary Translators Association’s blog. She was an NEA fellow for translation at the Vermont Studio Center and a fellow at the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference. She is fiction editor at Queen Mob's Teahouse and associate translation editor at Drunken Boat. She is a PhD candidate at the European Graduate School.

Soffiati via. Copyright (c) Vito Bonito, 2015. English translation copyright (c) Allison Grimaldi-Donahue, 2016.