She overlooks the exact spot where Harry, Katia, Maurice, and forty others passed away. She stares at that spot, then screams into the void of the Unzen valley and of this dimension.
I had never thought of a slave witnessing a volcano before; that specific scenario was not conceivable in my reality. As someone who had always longed to connect with the ghosts of my shared diasporic past, I had to know: How did slaves react to a volcano? My project was an attempt to communicate with history and, hopefully, sew together any holes left by neglect.
A collection of poems following the story of a young girl, Petra, and her trusty hound dog, Kosmos, as they navigate Campi Flegrei—the flaming “Phlegraean” fields in the south of Italy.
Weeks, the roads rumble
out under feet passing
on Pozzuoli soil, streets
A gentle roll of the heel, a new
pleat in the pasture
All but one stroll openly,
pleasants, possessed in routine
except for
a Girl of fourteen …
Petra petrologist
stands in her lab
a Woman of forty,
a Woman well learned
holds old harmony in her Home
of some souls lived past, of
a Girl of four made from…