(Mistake)

Written by Luca Benassi

Translated from the Italian by the poet

Narrated by Bill Wolak

Italy

I always mess up

and I should be wearing a sign

lit like a beacon in my flesh

engraved in my hand, a cross

an indecipherable letter

from the alphabet of pain

it will say that it is time

for my mistakes:

you know that, I get lost

(or we both get lost

– we all get lost)

losing the path

to the peacefulness

that leads to the soft kiss

of the way back

Luca Benassi was born in 1976 in Rome. He is poet, essayist, journalist and translator. He published 5 poetry books and 4 poetry anthologies in Spanish, Japanese, Serbian, and Macedonian. His poems have been translated into English, Romanian, Turkish, Mongolian, Chinese and Korean. He published a book of essays on Italian contemporary poetry in 2010.