It is purely coincidental that Alessio Zanelli is the final contribution to appear in NDQ 92.3/4. We do not organize the volume in alphabetical order.

That said, we do make sure that we can highlight here the final contribution to each issue and for 92.3/4 it’s Zanelli’s “Little Flower.” As regular readers of NDQ know, this is not his first appearance in NDQ. He has appeared in at least three other issues (that I can find). To celebrate his return engagement then, I include his poem “The Abyss” that appeared in issue 87.3/4.

Little Flower
In memory of Czesława Kwoka

Was it a needle in the heart—little flower?
Or a lungful of the camp’s salubrious air?
Or an intrepid slug in the nape of the neck?
The bittersweet scent I seem to smell
at the sight of those murderous photos
a gracious-hearted artist braved to color
takes my breath and sleep away,
like a plunderer voluntarily captive
inside, ignoring mind and body.
I can’t decide whether to curse or bless
Mr. Brasse’s zeal—little flower—
that keen, sublime, terrific craft of his.
I only know, without that sight
overpowering me, even in the silence
of an interior room’s loneliness,
whether dark or flooded with sunlight,
life would not be worth living.
Past, present and future would not exist.
Hence, keep on staring me out—little flower—
your dignified eyes above and beyond mine,
as if the blame and the shame were yours,
so that despair, mine and everybody’s,
is damned to run forever and in vain
after the immortality you achieved
the very moment scum cut off your stem,
after stripping you of every single petal.
Though swollen and sealed,
your lips let out a tune of endless Spring,
for if somewhere there is one—little flower—
the door to Heaven hides about your face.

The Abyss

Plateaus and peaks rise for miles from the floor
but don’t make it to pierce the ceiling,
their summits show through but cannot graze it.
A puny little child wearing a silly- looking straw hat,
the complexion the color of fresh milk,
mom walking me hand in hand
along the bather-crammed waterline—
I was scared even of the smallest waves,
ran away from the uprush and the foam,
as if they could have sucked me under
and washed me off shore.
The mere idea of the abyss terrified me.
From that she always cared about protecting me._

Now that she gazes at me askance,
dark emptiness out of her pupils,
tenderly cross- eyed because of the exhausting journey
and the deepening divide,
and she hasn’t had a chance to see the sea in decades—
she still tries to guard me from the abyss.
The one she’s sliding into inch by inch.
Until one day eye contact and touch
will be all that’s left to tie the cord.
I have long stopped to dread the billows
and learned how to come up from the depths,
but she’s sunk not too far from the bottom,
while I can barely reach down to the summits.

~

Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English. His work has appeared in over two hundred literary journals from eighteen countries. His sixth collection, titled The Invisible, was published in 2024 by Greenwich Exchange (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.

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