Federico Federici: About to Scream

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

I.

Your wide open mouth

hovered about to scream

when the bus dropped you

off and your turn came

to join the single file queue

and charge your face

with the millions of other faces

dying of crossing thresholds

of pulling carts cluttered

with junk to be piled up

on a closet or a grave

– theirs or no one's. No exit

through the holy place:

the desert or the check-out

lanes at closing time,

covered with coupons

from another season.

The job of those who buy

pays the job of those who sell.

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Federico Federici lives between Berlin and the Ligurian Apennines. His works have appeared in international journals and anthologies including «3:AM Magazine», «Jahrbuch Der Lyrik», «Poet Lore», «Raum», «Sand», «Trafika Europe», «Magma». Among his books: the prose/poem in English and German “Requiem auf einer Stele” (2017), the asemic albums “Liner notes for a Pithecanthropus Erectus sketchbook” (2018) with a foreword by SJ Fowler and “A private notebook of winds” (2019).