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Massimo Fantuzzi
EASTBOURNE
The sagging breath of the sea in the stubborn
slapping of waves – front. Right, following
an uninterrupted perspective of groynes, sodium
and time’s imperceptible claws eat and rewrite
chalk and dark soil. Thoughts
at their crucible, some break,
crumbled, some rebel and jump suicides
from a white, too white cliff.
Between here and there, the Grand Hotel
like a wedding cake
lost its spouses and allergen sheet.
Having perhaps forgotten its fragility of wafer,
this crab carapace appears unscathed
from the scrutiny and the carpet bombing of seagulls
and drones paparazzi – unoccupied
mask in this unremitting reshuffling of shingles,
in this tidal frogmarching us nowhere – I will
shield its incantation for another day.
About the writer:
MASSIMO FANTUZZI is a British-Italian dual national living in Leicestershire, where he works in special education. Member of the editorial board at Triggerfish Critical Review, his poems have appeared in Alba, Orbis, The North, Tears in the Fence, A New Ulster, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Abridged, Morphrog, BlazeVox, Maintenant, Bombay Gin, Grey Sparrow Journal, Night Picnic Press, In Parentheses, Bosphorus Review of Books, Quail Bell, Poetica Review, Danse Macabre, E·ratio, Menacing Hedge, Berkeley Poetry Review, The Dalhousie Review, and elsewhere.
Image: View of Houses above Rocks on a Beach by Anonymous (British School). Oil on canvas. 21.2 x 27.5 inches. Between 1800 & 1829. Public domain.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprints Buttonhook Press, HOT BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Issues, and HIGH BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Art, supports writers and artists worldwide.
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