Isabella, Potted
︎︎︎ Toni Juliette Leonetti
︎ Apr 9, 2026
(after “Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil: A Story from Boccaccio,” by John Keats)
In this translation, I’m dead.
Will you kindly slice off my head,
plant it in the lemon pot we glazed
on a sapphire day in Napoli,
hug it with earth from where we lay
tight-cased, gushed open to seed?
Will you water my bloodless cheeks
and dirt-shut eyes with your grief,
as Keats made Isabella cry
over Lorenzo’s basil in verse?
Or will you rejoice that I died,
leave my grave shrunken by thirst?
Will you wait till my jade hair sprouts
and grows, to coil worm’s silk about
your wrist as you once did, forcing me close?
Will you crave me on pasta, cut my long spill,
crush it with oil, garlic, pignoli, Parmigiano?
Will you feast to corpse-bloat on the love you killed?
In this translation, I’m dead.
Will you kindly slice off my head,
plant it in the lemon pot we glazed
on a sapphire day in Napoli,
hug it with earth from where we lay
tight-cased, gushed open to seed?
Will you water my bloodless cheeks
and dirt-shut eyes with your grief,
as Keats made Isabella cry
over Lorenzo’s basil in verse?
Or will you rejoice that I died,
leave my grave shrunken by thirst?
Will you wait till my jade hair sprouts
and grows, to coil worm’s silk about
your wrist as you once did, forcing me close?
Will you crave me on pasta, cut my long spill,
crush it with oil, garlic, pignoli, Parmigiano?
Will you feast to corpse-bloat on the love you killed?
Toni Juliette Leonetti lives in Half Moon Bay, California.