Mary Ford Neal

            The day is on its hands and knees. Mammina basks

            on the balcony in great-grandmother dignity

            in all the quiet of a woman who has outlived her daughter,

            collarbones glistening, little cross flashing pink

            and gold among rivulets of August evening sweat

            as the sun finally loses its grip and goes down fighting,

            painting the duomo in eyeshadow colours.

            The whole horizon is made of churches.

            An ambulance squeals along an unseen street,

            not the smooth wail of the ambulances back home,

            but a desperate, discombobulated sound like the cry

            of a confused animal. Mammina makes the sign of the cross,

            lets loose a fast prayer. Her words are a string

            of small, round beads, tumbling one after the other.

            How can you be so sure anyone is listening? I ask

            in her bubbling tongue. My head is dusky with

            the sweetness the city gives off at the height of summer,

            and with all my days and nights at university.

            Mammina opens one eye, closes it, smiles back in her chair,

            takes a fat medjool date between leathery thumb and

            forefinger, squeezes it lightly, and says

            This perfect thing does not exist by accident.