at the first trace of blue               I wandered the unpaths,               finding myself thoroughly

 lost in a gray spritz of rain,           the cyan-stuccoed, faded                lines of shopkeep homes

shut before dawn, before            the tourists shuffled off                 bullet trains da Firenze

with their Carnival masks             & breadcrumbs for the birds,          made for San Marco’s

to schedule afternoon                  gondola rides or shop                    along the Rialto for glass,

but in the morning twilight           I, with my American splash,           shoes half-covered in

lagoon-tide, had nowhere            to turn as the via dissolved          abruptly into canal, & so

listened to the soft-chop                 lapping the moors                             & gazed across at three

kids washing clothes, who           wondered at my being there,        whether I’d fall into the brack.

—

Alex Lundy currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he works with formerly incarcerated individuals seeking employment. His work has appeared in the X-peri Vessel and in Minnesota State University Moorhead’s Red Weather journal. He can be found on Instagram @lundyalex.