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POETRY By: Dennis Barone, Vince Clemente, Anita Dellaria, Joseph Ditta, Lucia Gervino, Al Montesi, Laura Anna Stortoni, and JOURNEY TO
ITALY Bells,
bells, bells: the first
thing I heard, lost in the
streets of Rome. I couldn’t
understand a word even though
I had practised for months
before we left. A motor
scooter nearly killed me and someone
spoke directly to me. I became
dizzy, heard only swallows and no
person’s voice. Trucks,
then, or were they planes? Somehow I
got to the airport. Where were
you? I saw a
plane take off. Were you on
it? I must have
fallen asleep. The crowd
makes wrong seem right. They pushed
me along and I could not resist
the push. I am at Naples
Harbor. They say you will return to
Rome if you throw coins into the
fountain. Did you? A band
marches by, a marching band. It is an
advertisement. More bells, bells, bells. Then talking
and singing. I can’t understand a
word they’re saying. “El crass,
crassione.” Who knows? Italians
appreciate good food. I was told before we
left—actually it was several years ago, a
decade—that the best peaches in the world are grown in
Italy. “Your essay
lacks the passion that it
requires for the A- that it deserves. The fault is
probably mine and not yours.” But it was a
B+ for your paper on Journey to Italy. Quiet for
just a moment; then one drum beat. If
it were England, I’d call it a pub.
Street musicians pass by
outside. Inside, the clatter
of plates. I walk past a
playground and hear children’s voices. It sounds
like one constantly shouts, “Goody!
Goody!” I don’t know. They begin
to annoy me. There are
too many of them: too loud,
too close. One coughs. I’m rescued
by a tarantella. That I like.
Your cousin played one
at our wedding and then the
hora. I felt like
dancing, but didn’t. “Crazy
American.” “Si, si.
Crazy American.” But, at
least, continued on my way
humming. I might as
well have been singing
“Feeling Groovy,” kicking up
the cobblestones. Ah, Italy.
The great Naples Cathedral.
The honoring of Saints. I
thought the singer sick. The
way he sang. I did not understand
it. Back out to the dissonant
street noises. The voices I could not
understand, now relieved by their
sound as if a beloved hymn. For a moment
I remembered a small restaurant
in South Philadelphia where the
proprietor played the mandolin and how we
drank all that wine there and
how you went home and I continued on
to Rob’s house with Gil. Italy isn’t
like that at all. Who do I
know? Even the cheap
Italian wine that bears my name is not
available here. I get lost
and then my accordion master winds
up a little tune and I smile
for some few moments. Milan has a
huge train station. The Rapido
is arriving from Rome. Will you be
on it? Christopher
Columbus worshipped here before
he sailed the ocean blue in 1492. The
Cathedral has a very large
organ. Large, large, large and
then those swallows— small birds,
made large by their number. (Wait a
minute while I turn the page.) La Scala—we
had tickets— where you
were I hardly knew. So, I went
without you. The audience
waits for the conductor. Claps.
Overture. But all I hear is the Italian
National Anthem as if in
some square on a summer’s day, not
Rossini—was it? Might have
been Beethoven, Fidelio. Fidelity—in
the crowd we bump, recognize
one another, pledge to see the
shepherds play their strange
song. The crowd makes wrong seem
right. They push us along and we
do not resist the push.
Everyone is singing. Neither of
us can understand a word. (You
did not practice at all.) We
sing nonetheless. “A cor, a
cora susta.” We become
excited and emotional, but nobody
minds. We hop two motorbikes
and we’re off driving as
madly as they do. Can I take
that word and give it to you in
that old tired phrase “madly in
love”? We are. I think so. Together
we stop to hear the street organ and we
both think of the carousel
outside the Smithsonian in Washington,
D.C. at just the same moment and
say so. Then laugh. The phone
rings in our room —just like
at home— at the worst
of times. We decide to answer it
this time. You can’t
understand a word the person says and
pass the phone to me. I can’t
understand a word the person says,
either. I return to you and you
only. More songs and more
singing. It is pleasant and peaceful in
the hills of the North For a moment
we both think of A Farewell to Arms. Shake our
heads. This is
Italy. Its sounds and people. 1898: AN
ITALIAN ODYSSEY You swear
you’re back in Rositana, feel the
late-day sun along your
neck as you trace
a skein of railroad track stretching
east to Mississippi that seems to
undulate in afternoon
haze, too hot even in
shade of the boss’s shack. You are 15,
Uncle Joseph, stand hands in
pockets, numb, your
father’s arm around you is little
comfort. You’ve never
seen him cry before. At 15,
you’re too old to cry, too old. The word Wop
didn’t gaff you you heard
that before, nor the way
the Irish foreman looked at
you through
broken teeth, but this is
something else: 6 months
laying track from
Shreveport to the Mississippi line cross half
of Louisiana, on payday the
shack boarded they leave a
sign reading “Out To
Lunch.” How you got
back to New York City, the tiny
white-washed flat without a
dime in your pocket with
red-dust in your hair, that part my
mother forgets. All your
life though, you remember
your father sobbing, on his knees
sobbing, “Sweet,
Christ! How will we
tell Moma, tell Moma?” NONNI’S
BUGGY RIDE I’ve never
told anyone what you’ve
told me but I should Dio I have your
permission to tell why your Pa
would leave a cantina in Italy for coal
mines in Illinois six months
in the mines six months
on strike six months
pay and six months
credit from the
tavern where you snuck in the back
door bought a bucket
of beer for a dime you did Pa’s
bidding all your
brothers’ bidding shared the
bucket a shot of
whiskey every morning scrubbed
their sooty backs Do I have
your permission to tell your
brothers peed out the window yellow
icicles in winter you squatted
off the porch the outhouse
was too far and too cold Yes were you
really in that carriage wearing your
best straw hat and not you
torn dress and not your
dyed white shoes with the
black buttons your brother
standing reins in one
hand waving the other challenging
a fellow charioteer in a buggy
race to a Labor
Day picnic in Witt? ULTIMATE
ELSEWHERE my furniture
is taking a trip to
the continent the
grainy-gray mock Victorian
chest of drawers bloomers or
sketchers under my
twenty-three-year-old scentless
sachet which made
me at fourteen a woman who wore panties a
white-bordered Kodak shiny square your early
womanhood those tender
curves shapely like
Marilyn Monroe sister
crying her pre-verbal tears I cried for Joey
LaRocca listening to Peter Paul
and Mary sing about
packing bags catching
planes though we
weren’t traveling far the promise of
separation was exquisite GODDESS While I
waited alone my other
self walked to
the window— a lovely
curtainless frame my
outstretched arms could barely reach fingertip to
fingertip— a nice
suicidal ledge wide enough
to support narrow
enough to encourage an opening
to take flight from my place
across the room hands and
legs discreetly
and politely crossed and
folded I felt the
melted breeze thickened remnant
of the highest heaven She
unbuttoned toes curling
the ledge hands
forgetting the frames preparing barebreasted While I
waited her return Gladiolus Because you
can give flowers to a woman I brought
you Nasturtiums
and Lillies and Gerber Daisies I wrote on
the white paper wrap “I stopped
by the side of the road where the
wildflowers grow” It was your
birthday and I didn’t
walk alongside the four
lane highway I tripped
over verdant rolling hills wearing a
bonnet with my long tresses tickling my
bare arms I didn’t
pick the flowers instead bluebirds
bearing ribbons appeared and snipped the stems
with their beaks and tie the
flowers into a spontaneous bundle You
unwrapped the flowers read my note arranged
them artfully and found
their place beside the
grandeur of the
Gladiolus given to you
by your lover GAS-BLUE we dream the
same tonight will
I total eclipse you my moon over
your sun tongue-ties
flames your feet
burned orange-yellow then bright
gas blue I lit the
match head-long
bullet plunge fall from
grace or the body
gone seive-like choose your
descent we dream the
same mute fear VEILS three women
in black one pushing a
baby carriage two
in front walking
large enough for a man it
carried inside the
carriage covered their
faces with veils black looked
at limbless FORBELL
STREET Here it is
the spread of the maple
and the height of the
Siberian elms that roof the
night, crisscrossing the summer
evening with multiplicities
of shadow. Here I step
into the street
of memory where desire and
unconsciousness weave a lace of
being, where Irish
and Italian, German and
Jew delicately interlock
isolated lives. The street
is roofed with Dutch
elms under whose
branches soft yellow
lamps gild the
sidewalks and pavement. A
self-effacing mediocrity of homes conceals
custom and accent, as the rank
alleys loose into
the night the smells
of fish and vinegar, the
children’s playful fears the church on
the corner dispels. Over this
street, now, loneliness enhances the
hour, Emma shyly at the
window dreaming, “Ich würde spielen wenn ich sprecken könnte,” making it as
real as fiction. Tenderness
transfixes the moment I could not
know was strange. “If I could
speak”—the words come, out of a
wound in the soul, exhausted. Passing, as
others passed before us, into the
stations of time, our unspoken
lives dreamed at the window an
unbegetting golgotha of words. FICTIONS OF
TIME A simpering
great grandson climbs upon your
lap—white haired, dry ribbed, humped with
age, refugee from a
nineteenth-century army dry licking
toast in the space age. You were
destroyed by the fiction of time, God’s tale
told in the flesh, bone by
bone, of dissolution and death in a world
whose changes you could never measure. Yours is one
of the lesser tales. Empire’s
decay. Derangement. Fragmentation. Resurgence
and destruction. Again and again. Inside the
opera house the overture begins. Your part is
the six-year-old’s listening on
the steps, lighting cigar stubs
stamped out by men who entered with
brocaded ladies on their arms. On the
aquamarine horizon you can still
imagine, as light fails, a stern duke kneeling
before the Pope, silhouettes of helmeted
troops with pike and bow, city in
flames, banners, chanting of vespers— shadows of a
community of obedience awaiting the
advent of another duke. Under the
stars, smelling of tobacco, hunger
drives you home. Through the rusted gate. Down the
moonlit alley, past the pots of azaleas and the old
man planted like a summer acacia, to the plain
door and the candle-lit silence
inside. When I come home everyone
knows who I am. The
undeniable reality is here. The door
closes on the night. Tangled streets of memory
bank over ditches of the dead. My tale,
tell my tale softly, God, speak me
into less meaningless flesh, into a few
syllables one might wish to sing. THE TIES
THAT BIND He had given
line to garden and face, creating
clarity in his own quarters during the
turmoil of two wars, barely able to
speak the language of his children. He stands
there in black suit and vest, high collar
and bowler hat, poised
beside the monument of his wife in lace and
veil. Sixteen
grandchildren are scattered over the continent,
none bearing his name, his
influence now submerged into a race
no one can define. This picture
is destined to some attic and
eventually to the flames, while here
and there a cheekbone, a lip or
shape of an eye go
unrecognized, in Florida or
Virginia or South Dakota, speaking in
different accents, the ties
that bind yielding so easily. Whose eye
now looks upon the Tames or once
traced cloud shadows along the Po? Eye like
nothing in the midst of nothingness. Who walks
here beside the James? This spring
the world seems almost new, rain melts
the snow and cleans the streets, the air is
filled with odors. Home is many
lifetimes away. for Chè MAKE IT RAIN I wish, I wish it would
rain No! pour. The sky should
blacken, the clouds rumble, the rain pour. Hard Very hard I wish it would
storm, like this; and, we were
caught, caught in a field, drenched with
desire. The rough waters falling, hard, very hard on our heads, almost beating our
bodies. Punishment, perhaps, for being so
human. For not knowing any
better, any better way to show our love. But, for our
words, our eyes, our hands. Touching. Primitive. Yet wishing to show more. The Problem. Frustrated, from our lack. The ground is
drenched, drenched with
desire. They feel good. We fall. Of course we have no choice: We no longer
care . . . We love. WHITENESS In this cruel light, where the loathsome
white drips through the conduit, I cannot see to see. I long for the soft shades of black, and
if my wounds do not soon destroy me, the white shall. I have been floundering, floundering in
this part of the pipe for hours. Yet I dare not call out for help, even
though my body is bleeding furiously, for I fear those above and below. Great chunks of my flesh have been torn
from my side, for the sleek members of my tribe were
jubilant when
they attacked me with their sharp teeth. I am weakening, weakening as I feel my
own life’s blood raining away . . . But this is not quite so horrible as the
ugly white that glares above me. My beginnings were likely enough. Long and lean but strong was my father, and mother was fairly tall. But I never grew to any considerable size, so when I entered the group, I did not fight for dominance. The others were too stout and strong. Yet though I was not overly big, I could render the tribe certain
services. I could sense certain dangers and alert
the community when it was threatened . . . In time
they came to value me, and when I
took a mate, there was no fighting to get her. In those days, we lived near great stores
of food thrown extravagantly about in alleys or
stored in great masses in warehouses. We thrived happily, for we were then few
and provisions were many. But soon we grew to a larger and larger community. We became so many that frequently there
were fights over females and food. But despite these troubles, we lived on. But one day those who lived on the
pavements above us grew to enormous numbers, and their food became
scarcer and scarcer. Soon nothing was left for us in the
warehouses and alleys, and frequently there were mass hunts to
ferret us out for food. Our own provisions soon dwindled almost
to nothing. Larger members began chasing smaller ones
away, and the females were snatched away from
the weakest. For a while, they allowed me to keep my
mate, but today, several attacked me viciously. In a short time, they had gnashed and
torn my flesh and whisked my wife away. I fled bleeding to this conduit, and now I await whatever comes. Stories of our tribe go back to a time, so long ago that we have forgotten dates: when my people lived upon the earth rather than beneath it and fed on twigs and leaves. But one day we went underground. It seems to me that this move was most unnatural; somewhere, we did go wrong. Somehow, this dying seems unimportant; it was always puzzling to be alive. Since I dare not hunt for food in the
light above and dare not go back to the next, there is nothing left for me to do. I am hungry and hurting and the light
above me torments me. And soon, very soon, I shall die. PORTRAIT OF A HILL MOTHER In a lean shack on a lean hill the sun pouring thickly down, I imagine her thin and rheumy frame, stirring from stove to pump, Wearing within her eyes and face four hundred years of mountain pain. Moving in little runs of work; she looks out upon a scrawny yard, where runty hens peck about an old disabled car, whose parts litter the yard. A lank mountain lad, whose stark blue
eyes mock the rock and land, darts about the sprawling motor handling its metal innards as if they were the limbs of a girl. With ease, he drops beneath the chassis and as he shifts, the engine totters and, for a moment, gigantically plunging
down above him, he watches the awful car. Painfully pinned, his blue eyes meeting a surge of blood, he lies impaled beneath the car. And then I see your legs as if touched by some rare fire, rush toward the tormented boy. Already at his side, your ninety pounds distended you lift the two-ton car. II And I, in my jaded and tired city, Having read what happened there, quicken at this mountain physics, and turning, I look to see flowers growing from the bricks of
skyscrapers, and through the asphalt, trees. by Laura Anna Stortoni RED GERANIUMS for Daniela Gioseffi When I think of you, I see red geraniums bright against the backdrop of a cobalt-blue sea, and I smell jasmine— sweet to the nostrils at dusk, growing in clusters against houses of
sandstone. When I try to imagine your voice, I hear the stornelli of your ancestors, the patient women with the eyes like dark olives
. . . I hear them singing in minor chords, opening up their hearts in deep outbursts. And I see Mediterranean towns, with gnarled fig-trees rising over
whitewashed walls, and red geraniums at the windows, red geraniums, red geraniums everywhere. Old Stories Sitting over bread and cold ham before Sunday evenings of cousins and
uncles, past the afternoon of cards or touch
football, we ate the old stories that metamorphosed our parents from pallid shadows of familiar habits to characters who could capture fire in a strange land of disasters, jokes, and rescues that left them standing in fear, or in awe of the firm beat of their
hearts. And years later in soft dusk of summer at the lake, over stories of simply what we did at the time, our children bear witness to the same transformation: On the roof in zero dark we were frozen hands and buckets, proof against flames prowling the chimney, and eight days without power that November of hurricane we cooked on coal, ate by candlelight, warmed three long nights in the old
dance. Oh, we knew them all right—four feet
snows, the initiations of swimming holes, a night of wayward horses, some hours in jail. In the hover of voices and last bird
calls, our children will have forgotten words such as harm and loss, presuming instead that time cannot wrong
them, that our secure and noble together will remain inviolate, borne above time by the old stories. In That Time We lived in a big, old house, our parents’ odd job after work, moonlighting forty acres, some cows, horses, and geese; where work was the daily bread, and water made it sacred. In those summers when the pond became swale grass and horseflies and the curled blades of corn cried rain, the well would run low and the pump whine, drawing not water but air, reducing the kettle and sink to empty, until the well’s slow fill and father’s steady wrenching of gauges and pipes (patience his only helper) bled off the air so that water would flow, and mother could bless the tomatoes with water. When the barn pump froze and snow clogged the driveway, we tobogganed through hummocks and drifts, hauling ten gallon pails from the house (without spilling) to creatures that strained in their stalls as soon as they smelled it, trip after trip, until their deep eyes of thanks would bathe us in father’s old litany: “Don’t waste water”! |