Venice, Unaccompanied

By Monica Youn Monica Youn

Waking

on the train, I thought

we were attacked

by light:

chrome-winged birds

hatching from the lagoon.

That first day

the buoys were all

that made the harbor

bearable:

pennies sewn into a hemline.

Later I learned to live in it,

to walk

through the alien city—

a beekeeper’s habit—

with fierce light

clinging to my head and hands.

Treated as gently as every

other guest—

each house’s barbed antennae

trawling for any kind

of weather—

still I sobbed in a glass box

on an unswept street

with the last

few lire ticking like fleas

off my phonecard I’m sorry

I can’t

stand this, which

one of us do you love?

“Venice, Unaccompanied” copyright © 2003 by Monica Youn. From Barter, published by Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. All rights reserved.

Source: Barter (Graywolf Press, 2003)

Biography

Monica Youn’s poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Tin House and in Cue: A Journal of Prose Poetry. Her awards include the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University and residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell. Her books of poetry include Barter (2003) and Ignatz (2010), a series of poems loosely based on the mouse character from George Herriman’s Krazy Kat comic strip of the 1920s-30s, was a finalist . . .

Continue reading this biography