If I became the female self of Dante Alighieri
I want Hans Rookmaaker as my Virgil – my teacher through hell.
Hell then would be a spiraling modern art gallery, a nine story icebox.
The bottom of that icebox the imprisoned Monet, paintbrush in hand,
“Where is the sensation?” Monet laments to his separated talent.
“Where the five sensations go when dead, I suppose,” states the demon.
Asking my guide if all our talents speak after death, he teaches me;
\u201cThose to whom death surprises remain separate from themselves.\u201d
\u201cAnd how does death surprise, teacher?\u201d I ask.
\u201cBy allowing sensation to be your guide is just the start of death’s deceit.\u201d
My guide takes me to my soul\u2019s Beatrice.
A monk who prays the classics and beautifies the deep well walls\u00a0of knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We labor the illuminated mountain together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Photo by JR Korpa on Unsplash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If I became the female self of Dante Alighieri<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11,22,9],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-amwriting","tag-poetry","tag-poettues"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":717,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions\/717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}