Kiss the stomach of your raw child,
wrap him three times in the heat of birth,
feed him, bathe him, drown him carefully.
By now your nails are weightless daggers
that trace in the ice of my back
the knocked-out 8 of eternity.
Your hair sets the mattress aflame
and I become
– as far as I can tell –
the first individual
to be cremated during sex.
In a dark scarf and sunglasses
at the disposal of my astonished remains,
you lift the lid off my makeshift urn
to feed me to the goldfish in the Tiber.
You are alone again,
fingers free to tease the single sheet of night
into a hundred cotton children holding hands.
~ Daniel Roy Connelly
Though English by birth, Daniel Roy Connelly has spent much of his adult life being educated in Italy, India, Bangladesh, the USA and Scotland. Formerly a British diplomat, he has been an academic since 1999. He has a BA from Columbia University and a MLitt and PhD from the University of St Andrews. He has directed theatre on three continents and was until 2010 the Artistic Director of Zuloo Theatre in Shanghai, where his production of David Henry Hwang’s ‘M. Butterfly’ was forced to close by the Chinese secret police. Daniel is currently an assistant professor at John Cabot University in Rome and at The American University of Rome.
Artwork:Â Pencil vs. camera (59), by Ben Heine
