Florence, Italy
Outside the Santa Maria Novella basilica, I draw belief
in God for hours on a bench and local and foreign
visitors watch me watching faith. We all stare down
the church. Revisit and retrace an object
as if it can save the millennium, as if it can save me.
I am drawing to you, Love, in straight black lines
as a spectator’s wrinkles deepen. Who is on the watch
for angels and Satan as millennials take self-portraits
filtered to Beautiful for hours in front of the church?
As if to follow as if to Like as if to Share as if to Friend
as if to Capture as if to Block as if to Leak. Is this social
media faith’s purgatory? Please believe in my selves.
Inside my real body, frescoes. Frescoes and sketches of
now dead little i’s and little u’s then purportedly loving.
Love™ – a façade as flat as the green and white lines
mapping the face of the Santa Maria Novella.
All one hundred people in this square freeze
to view order for seconds and minutes and hours
and the lovers kiss and hold it as if Love’s relics
as I wonder who will be discarded upon homecoming as
if trash blown up dew-slicked streets of East Walnut Hills.
u and i kissed and held it for years
in America to peel off the monochromatic
color scheme on Satan’s dividing palette yet
my image you displayed for no one. Unaffirmed,
unshared, you ghosted me. Our love—my grave.
Behind the basilica, the sinking sun births shadow-
twins, keeps loneliness company. Couples go silently
away. Nights, I pretend to be Loved™—paint God.
Where the tour
Where the auction