SPRING 2025 Curator: Simona Carini
Survival Time
by Simona Carini
ISBN: 9798985524246 —
$16.00 ($$4.63 US Shipping per order)
For international orders, please purchase through your respective Amazon.com
Simona Carini was born in Perugia, Italy. She writes poetry and nonfiction and has been published in various venues, in print and online. Her first poetry collection Survival Time was published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions (2022). She lives in Northern California with her husband, loves to spend time outdoors, and works as an academic researcher. Her website is https://simonacarini.com
Before Our Hike, We Visit Monte Corona Abbey
The church door creaks open. Our steps
resonate in the mid-afternoon silence.
White light streams from high windows,
expands the raised apse, distances the altar.
We descend into the crypt: five naves,
arches all around, each supporting column unique.
We wander the worn flagstones,
take refuge under the low ceiling,
bricks infused with centuries of incense and prayer.
I kneel on a side pew, closer to earth,
listen for a heartening breath or beat
to blunt the hurt of her daughter’s cancer
and my husband’s, too, unwind
the disease that seized our lives,
so we wouldn’t share the anguish,
so I wouldn’t know what keeps her awake.
Night Shift in the Cancer Ward
Milan, January 13, 1985
Walking to work, my boots printed
on the silver dust of a first snow.
A quiet falling,
a thin layer on the sidewalk,
crisp as finely ground glass.
No cars on the boulevard,
no trolley sparking overhead.
Through the glass door,
the dimly lit hospital hall.
Lights off in the ward,
a soft lamp guided me to the nurses’ station,
my post watching over
twenty bodies resting.
The smell of sleep,
of stuffy, heated air
stronger than the chlorine, iodine
that sanitize suffering.
Midnight found me
at the widest window
watching snow cloak the sleeping city,
frozen cars under burial mounds.
The space behind me
swathed in bronze silence
an alarm could have shattered
at any moment.
Some nights it did,
and the world outside the ward
would recede farther,
pushed by care’s pressing needs.
Mine the choice of calling,
the long hours of solitary shift.
Twenty lives in my hands,
a disease’s clutch,
unlike flakes falling
under streetlights’ golden cones
in the glow around buildings,
glitter from dark clouds.
Still falling, when the sky tried for dawn,
made it to steel gray.
