In a small siding of The Doge’s Palace,
away from the heavy oil paintings, leakage
of audioguide headphones and babel of tourists
pecking for historic titbits or cooing over gilt,
Guariento’s fresco shines in its paleness.
Even his half-faces have worn with the curve of haloes.
Though golds have drained to brown, harp strings
thinned, musician fingers faded to bones,
still the angels play, still Christ crowns his mother—
a ghostly Virgin on her Gothic throne. And still now,
two small unembellished windows play out this light
and dark in shapes cast upon walls and floor—
those same shadows that battle on blinds and drapes
in every room, creeping through cracks to hide
with apples and bottled water weighting our backpacks,
as we follow the stone echo of footsteps
down the skyless staircase towards the Bridge of Sighs.
About the author
Sarah James has been landlocked in the UK’s Midlands, confined to flights of imagination. However, she reports she's been bitten by the travel bug…
Read the full bioIssue 16 · October 2012
Table of contents
- From the editors
- Poetry
- Postcard Prose
- Mary’s Cruise by Dan Nielsen
- Always the Tiger by Linda Umans
- Dusk by Michelle Valois
- Travel Notes
More from The Journal
- Postcard Prose
By Kelly Hill
Trying to wrap my mind around living on a tropical island for thirteen years and never once seeing the ocean, I stumbled through my Indonesian vocabulary to say, It’s good. It’s big.
- Travel Notes
By Sandra Larson
A dinosaur dangles over my grandson at the Field Museum near a pink thumb that pops into the prom picture of my granddaughter dressed in strapless red leaving her house in Medina …
- Travel Notes
By Megan Hallinan
The bill in question is actually a 2,000 West African franc note, and it’s the equivalent of about four U.S. dollars. A helpful sum, really, but as I clutch the weathered crinkle in my sweaty palm, its value feels as dirty as the grime that is undoubtedly being transferred to my fingers.
- Poetry
to Egg and Berry brewery, to the pack / of Czechy words I made but didn’t work / in this pink town. I’d readily go back / to your best spots, the unfired gun, that perk //
- Poetry
By Jason Warren
And if the neap tides of my beauty / sadden him, I cannot help it: / I hang high, the waxy night light …
- Poetry
By Anastasia Vassos
Three thousand ancestors ask how I straddle / the sea, a foot on either shore. //
Read more Poetry or Postcard Prose