The Chimneys of Venice, and: My Fantasy Coffin
- The Chimneys of Venice, and: My Fantasy Coffin
The Chimneys of Venice
Once I’ve spotted them, they’re all I see,and so I grab a magnifying glass,tracing circles over shrunken copiesof famous paintings to see the chimneysflaring over Venice. Shaped like oboes—no, like calla lilies growing from the roofsof the famous city. Wait, let me see—they look like a bunch of plastic golf teesor maybe wood screws with splaying heads.Freudian symbols of Venetian power?Or were the painters simply realists,portraying how the damp city was heated?This one looks like a Pulcinella hat.And here’s a mushroom—and an organ pipe.Thousands of chimneys marked the kitchen hearthsof people who lived on the floating lily padof Venice. Smoke rose up the narrow fluesand poured sideways into the rosy air.The painters loved them—see how they bloom,odd stalks of brick above romantic rooflines.This must have been the painters’ favorite task,peppering the monumental buildingswith funny little chimneys belching clouds,then blending the sooty shades into the sky.On winter nights when everyone burned wood,a visitor, looking up, would see the sparks,and notice fire buckets piled up everywhere.They probably invented carnival masksto keep smoke out of the reveler’s burning lungs.I lean over my book and touch the pagewith my magnifying glass, attempting to bringthe curious chimneys into sharper focus,but only when I hold the book upside downdo I see sky turn to lagoon, see Venice [End Page 59] hang over the trembling water, its chimneysaquatic suction cups, keeping it steadywhile overhead the ominous green heavenripples with the oars of flying gondolas. [End Page 60]
My Fantasy Coffin
Soft as a sleek black cat—the small oneI petted on the way home last night,collarless, but someone’s pet, velvety.It purred, then sneezed, and rolled about.
Long as a kayak, with lots of roomfor the legs I’ll no longer be using,and plenty of space for my head to lollfrom side to side if the current’s swift.
Bright—not just red like a fire engine,but crimson as lava, blue as glaciers,and yellow as the curious sun looking downon my empty face bathed by the sky.
Deep, too, for I need room for my stuff,my spine and finger bones and heels,DNA, my eye jelly, and the hairwreathed about my pale, emerging skull.
And light—I want to get there soon,moving swiftly along the tributaries,no lingering in the cattails and shallows.I want to slip into the dark cave
before I get scared. My coffin just fits.It’s time to finish the last decorations,draw fancy tendrils around my namealready stamped on the side in gold leaf. [End Page 61]
Maura Stanton’s poems and stories have appeared recently or are forthcoming in the Hudson Review, Poetry East, Antioch Review, Zone 3, Bennington Review, Pembroke Magazine, and Firsts: 100 Years of Yale Younger Poets, edited by Carl Phillips. Her short story “Oh Shenandoah,” originally published in the New England Review, was read on stage at Symphony Space and the Dallas Museum of Art as part of Selected Shorts’ celebration of 100 years of the O. Henry Award.
