Art by Kate Shaw

 

 

It is the Fiat Tagliero building 

in Asmara, Eritrea, planned

by Giuseppe Pettazzi, fascist aesthete,

and built under his watch in thirty-eight.

 

On either side the central concrete spire,  

are fifteen-metre cantilevered wings,

the premature arrival of a future

long expired, and stationed in Asmara,

 

Eritrea. Some bureaucrat insists

this soaring flight must rest, during construction,

on state-approved supports. Pettazzi asks,

Have you no faith? Have these removed, or I 

              will build out here Asmara’s own Golgotha,

                          will make apocrypha of Little Rome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oscar Mardell is a writer and Teacher from Auckland, New Zealand whose work has been published in ‘The Literary London Journal’, ‘War, Literature and the Arts’, ‘3:AM’, ‘DIAGRAM’, ‘Terror House’, ‘March Vladness’, ‘Queen Mob’s Teahouse’, and ‘RIC’.