Mary Jo Salter


Roman Haiku

You spotted them first

at the Spanish Steps’ florist:

bought me those tulips.

*

Vatican map room:

there’s my grandparents’ birthplace,

Castellaneta!

*

Domed by umbrellas,

we left the long line, sad to

give up St. Peter’s.

*

Thanks, taxi driver—

when you got lost, we circled

the Colosseum.



Mary Jo Salter's ninth collection of poems, Zoom Rooms, will be published by Knopf in the spring of 2022. She is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and lives in Baltimore.