Renaissance at Venice

I paddle
through a pool
of honeymoons
while second-honeymooners
waltz through
the Jewish ghetto.

One canal at a time
they raise her
out of her slump.
I, too, had sunken
and now feel
a rising within.

II.
Theseus unraveled
the thread
into the imagination,
never to find his way
back out.

He left me
a string
of consonants
to follow
under bridges
and into a palace
with a crystal chandelier
as bright as (on a ceiling as high as)
my daydreams. There I met
the glass minotaur-poem,
stretched from the glowing sun—
certainly no match
for the gondolier-poet.
I could shatter it if I choose,
or opt to see a blinding
half-bull, half-man
instead of transparency.

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Jeanette Marie Sayers is a Medical Writer and the Poetry Editor of The Furnace Review. She obtained her M.A. in Editorial Studies from Boston University. Her works have appeared in California Quarterly and Red Owl Magazine and on Poetry Daily.