Glum Italian woman dressed
in black & white;
roadside Mona Lisa highway
sitting outside the port of Livorno,
on a road
far from Florence, for a painter
never coming.
Livorno, where cruise ships spew
weighty human freight
eager to walk off bulging
midriffs and snap pics
of the lush
Tuscan landscape.
Why she sits with thin tainted
lips,
how she feels and what she thinks?-
the gray questions the tourist has,
but doesn’t dare
to ask.
Maureen Martinez (she/her) is a late-blooming, emerging writer and irreverent woman of faith who has worked as a counselor at an all-boys Catholic high school in New York City for over 20 years. She comes from a long line of pine tree ramblers, blood moon dancers and raucous storytellers, which explains a lot. Her work has been published by Gramercy Review, Folly Journal, Boudin, Washington Square Review, BAR BAR, Artemis, Closed Eye Open, Please See Me, Madville Publishing and others.
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