Nick Carbo

Nick Carbo is the author of two books of poetry, Secret Asian Man (2000) and El Grupo McDonald's (1995). He has edited three anthologies of Filipino writing, Pinoy Poetics (2004), Babaylan (2000), and Returning a Borrowed Tongue (1995). He will be the Visiting Poet in the MFA program in poetry at Columbia College, Chicago, in the spring of 2004.

ITALIAN POSTCARD 37

In Gubbio the doors of the dead own shares in Umbrian pork belly futures, the price of cocoa beans, and bonds of Lombard era singing ox carts.

I'm looking for the silent stone spot where St. Francis shook hands with the man-eating wolf, promising him access to the national archives so the wolf could finally complete his research on longitudinal lupine leukemia.

ITALIAN POSTCARD 51

A Roman aqueduct runs from the side
of your mind transporting memories
of olive tree harvests around the city of Sienna,
of wide winding staircases in Orvieto,
of sheep grazing in fields below Vallo di Nera,
of Roman soldiers sinking to the bottom
of Lago Trasimeno staining the water red
for three days. You refuse to remember
Hannibal's victorious army marching on to Rome.