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Erminia Passannanti “Out of a squared chamber” i coming out of a squared chamber of okras and browns I fly over the cars stuck in the traffic cupping between my hands a bowl of rice as though I had just splashed into the quivering blue of an oceanic shoal for the sole sake of my spirit my face is neatly traced by a fine net of dotted lines encircling my mouth my eyes my nostrils as if someone were to modify the all lot: never mind I always disliked my kind ii her pronoun is fixed in Capital I so she can think what she thinks when she wants towering over the town as a hideous giant presenting to the crowd the cavity of her stomach imagine now her body spattered over the pedestrian area after the fall the nose crumbled the face disfigured the limbs tore apart turned chalky white the arms twisted and displaced her creamy stocking all tattered showing through the big elliptic holes her cracked knees and thighs iii we are told she was a nurse who had joined the Communist Party and whose name is still ignored the profile left to us is that of a woman who had spent the last fifteen minutes of her life with her eyes fixed on a bowl of rise against the soundless background of an oceanic shoal.