Martin Bennett



Giacomo Mally: The Lower Half

(After Raphael’s ‘The Transfiguration’) Someone shut the poor boy up! Arms flailing, Through mouth’s conduit epilepsy’s devils spewing freely, his eyes rolling east and west… Via rhetorical swerve of her shoulder A woman, ‘serpentinata’, reroutes our gaze Past million-dollar hairdo, …

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Giacomo Mally: Italian Lesson

‘Stivale NM boot/ Stoviglie NSFPL dishes’ ‘Slip on, tesoro, le tue stoviglie…’ So my over-eagerness mistook ‘stivali’/ Boots, here exotic, for crockery – Your look more of surprise than mockery – ‘What will this English bungler dream up next?’ You …

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Giacomo Mally: Pietro Da Cortona’s Ceiling

(Sala Grande, Palazzo Barberini, Rome) Riding their respective clouds Temperance, Religion, Piety wax triumphant; Fury, disarmed, reclines on his own weapons. Thanks to Minerva, dunce giants get flunked. Another twist of the neck and see Hercules Clubbing the harpies of …

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Late Performance

Martin Bennett lives and works in Rome. A collection of his poems has been published by University of Salzburg Press and three of his shost stories have been read on BBC World Service.

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