The Market at Porta Capuana
comes out of the ground, comes out
before sunrise with a scric-scric
of bicycles, zump of a handcart's iron
stumps, ish of willow baskets.
Little moons of breath break out
in the dying night air, uffa
the potatoes, aouf the tomatoes.
Your mattress is full of lumps. You know
the dark carnations are moving in. In the mouths
of shopfronts there are squid like soaplather.
A suit, hanging in public execution.
Voices argue, and they rise halfway
to music. It is the moment when outraged
ostrich feathers are arrayed against the cheese
in bulbous bunkers, when zeppelins of watermelon
zero in on the pendent powers
of salami. When someone starts to sing.
And a fifth floor window opens: reparations,
restorations rise in jugs
of wine and oil, pasta angel
hair, and very pure, egg-noodle stars.
Bruce Cutler, who died March 25, 2001, was an English professor, writer and poet who founded WSU's Master of Fine Arts degree program in creative writing and was awarded Wichita State's Adele M. Davis Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities in 1977.
The poem here is from The Book of Naples, his account of a year-long sabbatical in Italy. One of his last works, The Massacre at Sand Creek: Narrative Voices (1995), was nominated for a National Book Award.
