From: Etc.

The hotel he put me up in is shabby. The woman who checked me in monochromatic. There’s an alcove in the back bedroom filled with someone else’s dirty laundry. And through the glass windows, the city, the capital, from which all the small-eared rabbits have run away.

I pull out the small notebook I’ve started carrying with me everywhere and write the story of Heinrich Schliemann, the German businessman who discovered the ancient city of Troy. They say that the day after he

Started digging, all the she-goats came down from the mountain and announced that they would never again allow themselves to be inseminated.

The tap water here is oracular.

It’s a Monday.

The fifth or sixth one of the month.

And the story always told at parties of the man once who spent three years planning how to propose, and then refused to eat any of the jumbo shrimp at the reception. I sit down and make a list of all the prepositional

Phrases the woman downstairs had used during check-in, the fifth etymology of “cicada” I’ve come across since the plane touched down. A few telephone numbers. I study the photos he texted of his

Mother’s house and notice that there’s a worn strip of carpet leading from the first bathroom to the second. Sometimes the erotic is like that. Endlessly polite, but insufferable.

Ann Pedone’s books include The Medea Notebooks (Etruscan Press), and
The Italian Professor’s Wife (Press 53.) Her poetry, non-fiction, and
reviews have recently appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Posit,
Texas Review, ANMLY, and The American Journal of Poetry. Her project
“Liz” was a finalist for the 2024 Levi’s Prize. Ann is the founder and
editor-in-chief of the journal and small press, αntiphony.