I. Dante Alighieri

Easter, and the city held its breath.
A promise slipped its ring, then slipped again.
One look—no thunder, just a human oath—
and Florence passed the error on to men.
They waited where the god of war looks down,
stone eyes reflecting iron as it rose.
The boy was hardly blood before the crown
of houses split, each sworn against its close.
They said it was a woman, or her face,
or honor bruised beyond a clean repair.
I said the fault was men undone by grace,
misapplied to what it will not spare.
Love marked the act before the plan.
The knife remembers better than the hand.

II. Marcus Brutus

You tell it straight, yet leave out how it feels.
How something in the room begins to lean
toward action, how restraint itself congeals
into a dare no virtue has kept clean.
They spoke of Rome as if it were a child
we had to save by cutting out its heart.
I read the signs. I knew the crowd would smile.
I knew the blade before I knew my part.
Still, I was seized—pressed to my role,
as if delay were treason, breath a lie.
When steel went in, the world went oddly whole,
then shattered under one familiar cry.
You hear a curse. I hear a rising flood.
Finish it. History remands us back to blood.

III. Cassius Longinus

They dragged Lucretia in, hands slick with blood,
the crowd already swelling like a flood.
A man struck wood; the blow broke loose a cry:
her limbs lay wrong, arranged to look near whole.
Her father’s hand was steady in the lie,
turned chin to light, fixed posture to the role.
Men pressed the pit, each hungry for his part,
their teeth bared wide, rehearsing how to smile.
Watch her throat—the hammer in your heart
gone thin and quiet. Listen like a child
who finds a cut and works it clean:
the shouts will harden as your wound congeals.
You did not turn away. I saw you lean
your body into his; you learned how pressure feels.

IV. Julius Caesar

You think your stroke was guided by another hand,
as if the blade had entered by design or plan.
My body was no gift for you to spare—
I lay beneath your knives; you named it grace.
Junius did not wait to plead repair;
he lifted Rome by stripping Tarquin’s face.
A body in the square draws nations close;
a wound displayed will loosen any crown.
From Lucretia’s blood the first Republic rose;
from mine that ancient fury surges down.
You were not tempered by the tongues of men;
you stood within a house that swore its oath.
What once unseated kings returns again.
I hear that ancient measure in your breath.

V. Lucretia Tricipitina

Steel cools, yet rests a moment in the hand.
A wounded body ripens into oath.
They bless the wound and choose to call it grace.
A fallen weight decides who wears the crown.
What breaks in light keeps turning in the blood.
The square gives way beneath a rising flood.

I. Dante Alighieri

We crossed the river drunk, our voices true:
the bells along the Arno tolled too late.
Beneath old Mars, the broken spear still drew
our shadows thin across the river gate.
We entered Santa Croce’s broken skin,
where arches rose, unfinished in their frame.
We sang our cantos to the dark within,
and heard the rafters echo back our claim.
But then a word returned and took its hold;
the lantern thinned but would not rise to flame.
Beatrice, he sang; the nave unrolled,
and now the only echo was her name.
Past midnight, past the shallow scars
of commerce in the streets, I saw the bridge draw near.

Then judgment found my mouth and would not wait.
The city roared; the office sealed my ears.
I entered Guido’s name and ruled it fate
the moment law began to speak in years.
I wrote him smaller with each careful word,
pared flesh to risk, to rumor, to disease.
The pen grew clean. The sentence went unheard.
Sarzana opened like a wound laid bare.
I told myself the fever was not mine.
I told myself the body would endure.
I said the exile drew a necessary line,
and named that act restraint and cure.
Beatrice slipped beyond the rule I kept.
The seal took hold. I stood. The city slept.

II. Guido Cavalcanti

A fire burned beside the narrow bed; I slept,
my cloak beneath my head, the warrant kept.
The fever held; no draught could bring a cure.
Beneath my skull it pressed, each blackened line—
I lay awake, yet managed to endure.
The wax had cooled; the signet was not mine,
the band lay on the wood; the hand was bare.
No witness stood to counter what was heard.
Beyond my door were shouts and rumor—
I turned and would not shape a word.
The olive trees had thinned along the slope for years,
salt stiffened cloth and left its mark as fate.
The chapel bell rang out to empty ears;
the door remained unbarred; no need to wait.

I stood so close I felt your breath draw near,
the rim pressed hard and left a reddened scar.
You would not answer when I said your name.
The parchment lay between us, still unrolled;
you turned the signet slowly in the flame.
Your hand closed tight, the sanction in its hold
as wax ran thin then hardened into claim.
The window’s iron lattice cut within
a narrow band of light across the frame;
it marked your fist and lingered on the skin.
The courtyard door stood open near the gate,
a bell struck twice; the fading light withdrew
from stone and step. Too late.
The seal confirmed what had been chosen true.

III. Brunetto Latini

I taught you how to temper breath to word.
You learned too well how wax receives a seal.
Glory is a hunger dressed as name.
What you condemned, you also must endure.
Power does not vanish; it becomes a scar.
You chose your hour before the gate.

I. Judas Iscariot

I shall defend Mary Magdalene
of Galilee, sister of Lazarus,
the thirteenth apostle—a woman
whose heart belonged wholly to Jesus.
They never slept as man and wife;
they were as one. They walked the garden
mornings, then shared their bread at night.
They spoke with the same voice—tender,
without pretension. As time passed,
I grew sullen, like a neglected child
who daily prayed his parents would lavish
their attention on him. I conspired
to break their bond—to have her in the end.
I found thirty reasons to kill my friend.

Thus did my treachery lead him from bliss
to Golgotha, where Mary wept for days.
Had I foreseen the pain one single kiss
would bring upon his head, my faith
in him would have renewed my soul,
averting my fate under the bough.
I was driven mad by my betrayal,
while Mary, in her constant grief, avowed
to live upon the desert floor.
She spent her final days crawling in sand,
waiting for a sign from God to spring forth
from the ground—a burning bush, a ram
in a thicket—alas, nothing was there
but the arid wind passing through her hair.

II. Cassius Longinus

You call it penance, say it moved through hair
like ash in wind, but nothing durable stays there;
sorrow moves like blood—once loosed, a ram
drawn back from sacrifice, it still goes forth,
as pilgrims smooth its story down to sand
till vestments brush it smooth to temple floor—
the marble chills, the body disavowed
and sanctified by our betrayal.
A body leans the way a laden bough
bends toward fracture; so inclines the soul.
Call it discipline, or even faith—
no steel is clean that enters with a kiss.
What dries in stone outlives the heat of days;
the marble shines—we dare not call it bliss.

You held him close, a blade to a friend—
edge to rib, listening for the end.
You said a serpent and the dark conspired;
the tree leaned low, its blossoms lavish
as a wound split wide; no guiltless child
looked up by accident while morning passed.
Your neck below the branch was raw, yet tender,
and bore the noon until it bowed to night.
You chose this bower, still, as if the garden
was a covenant, as though a rib could make a wife;
as though your kiss was not the knife that Jesus
wielded first—you saw the woman
keening at the feet of Lazarus:
Eden and Gethsemane bound you to Magdalene.

III. Marcus Brutus

There is no threshold left beyond the end
What enters circulation answers as betrayal
A book stays open, emptied of its faith
All speech arrives already short of breath
A name persists, reduced at last to woman
A man reduced to nothing but a kiss