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POETRY By: Peter Carravetta,
Arthur L. Clements, Carmela Delia Lanza, Ann LoLordo, Carmine Luisi, Maria Mazziotti Gillan,
Michael Palma, John Tagliabue, and Tina
Vinciguerra-Orsini EPILOGUE I all this
today can still be said that is,
that no we are not it matters
little telling you in my tongue about her
skin and the glance the glance the I cannot
miss this rendez-vous since no we
are not all this
today can still be said the rain
like gems on your dusky face softens the
hair the shadows and you bubbling
light from a thousand pliable
jewels the sun then
adds oblivion we are no
longer nomad dreamers amidst the
babel of towers and dianoias and
strieking unpredictable recourses the oblivion
that encloaks the true light is only
vision and relax we are not
no we are not it can be
said to this day still relentlessly
the song rends the night
the absence the distance you who from the
other side of my tongue read listen
and maybe understand II somehow you
must know that rocks
have varying hardness and make up
and undefinable colors and way below
more dense and hot and fluid hidden like
the magma is the soul and you know
already that the notion of instananeous
total exact retrieval is not a
computer derived metaphor and is not
solely a coercive obsession not even
only a philosophical expression and you
probably know I am sure that the
clock ultimately is only a
cruel toy steering us
again around deadened grooves leaving one
indifferent to nothingness dropping me
you the entire creation with
asynchronous hands close
together among the rocks rough crushed and
jagged certain like
memories PANTOUM: DURING
DEPRESSION When she
said, “no, I sometimes wonder what I’m living for,” a blinding pileated
woodpecker flashed in sight with great
wing expanse and brilliant crest and lighted
on a tall, rotting oak beyond the bay window. A blinding
pileated woodpecker flashed in sight and kept
pecking at the thick base of a dead branch on the tall,
rotting oak beyond the bay window. She watched
with binoculars, enchanted, as it kept
pecking at the thick base of a dead branch, rot-wood
debris falling onto its black breast and away. She watched
with binoculars, enchanted, and it continued
to probe deeper and deeper, rot-wood
debris falling onto its black breast and away, it pulled
back to scrutinize its progress and then
continued to probe deeper and deeper, beak, head,
shoulders inside the hollowed hole. It pulled
back to scrutinize its progress, this
dazzling pileated woodpecker, beak, head,
shoulders again inside the deepening hole, changing
inner and outer landscapes, and when
this wonderful pileated woodpecker with great
wing expanse and brilliant crest changed
inner and outer landscapes she laughed,
“sometimes I know what I’m living for.” A CELEBRATION OF
ROSES So much for a rose is a
rose is a rose! R. A. Durr The desert
shall rejoice and bloom as a rose in rows of
roses arching over grass with all of the
many meanings of the rose. The Rose of
Jerusalem, Knight’s Bloom, each grows, like Jericho
and Poet’s Narcissus, fast in deserts
of rejoicing and blooms as a rose. Form of cut
gem, symbol of Horus, deposed rival
English houses, center of compass are some of
the many meanings of the rose. With choir
of saints in mystical repose, woman of
beauty and virtue unsurpassed, the desert
shall rejoice and bloom as a rose. Oh Rose of
May, dear maid, kind sister, disclose yourself a
rose in circular stain glass and more of
the many meanings of the rose. In certain
celebration of all those who rose to
highest consciousness at last, the desert
shall rejoice and bloom as a rose with all of
the many meanings of the rose, the rose, the rose . . . A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
WALKS NAKED for Susan A
beautiful woman walks naked in
the field and woods behind my old house. She
appears to me as
a deer with
large, clear, dark eyes that
enable me to see into
the beginning of
the universe. When
I open the sliding glass door
she is not shy, lifts
her head sniffing the air, comes
closer when
I offer her an apple. The
next day she returns as
the chipmunk on the edge of
the deck watching me calling
on mystery she
runs to the glass and
I put out my hand to her sprouting
with sunflower seeds. A
female cardinal flies to the feeder, the
leaves of an aspen tree wave, a
limb broken by
the weight of last year’s early snow. At
night a raccoon scratches on the screen, stands
like a human on
her hind legs, revealing her teats. If
I let her she would come in. Pythagoras
was astonished to see “everything
has intelligence,” Blake
believed “everything that lives is holy,” and
I know the woman wants me to
pass beyond the glass to
come naked into the light to
embrace the sumac branch to
lie down with her under
the wild high grass. A
SHRINKING WORLD “I
want to buy a gun,” I tell
you while you’re sleeping in the car, the
dry, late air of another day passes over us, hitting
the closed, dusty windows; I
point the steering wheel in a straight line to the sun, which
is falling and rolling down under the tires, under
our feet. We are
wrapped in sheets and sometimes
it is a room made of plastic, shaking walls put up
with tiny screws and glue, surrounded
by an open wound of sky; sometimes
it is a room with brick walls, cracked paint, people
on the other side, walking
up and down in hallways, night after night. Or
they are sitting in tight chairs in front of a t.v., skin
glowing back the blue light that is seeping
into all the corners: they
think they are safe. I turn
you in the bed and
sink my teeth into your shoulder, I tell
you I will check the windows one more time, turn
the knob one more time, making
sure only air will enter through the crack between
the floor and doorway. Mornings
are no better, and
that is not what people will tell me. The
lie is life tightens up in fresh, young light. But I
no longer look at eyes
or mouths loosening blurry words. “We are
all making it,” they say and they follow me through
noon, coffee cups, around corners, down
supermarket aisles, past parking lots and post
office doors to where the typewriters pick
up the same chant. But
that sunlight will always hit a
certain spot on my shoulder, a
certain time of day, failing
to convince me it is
all growing around me, it is
all moving to something larger
than you and me. ST. JOHN’S
CATHEDRAL How shall I part, and
whither wander down Into a lower World
. . .? John Milton We enter
together while you
stare, our footsteps
bounce off your floor, our voices
cannot penetrate the flawless marble. No air can
escape you. You are as unfeeling
as stone should be. The candles,
flags, crosses bend toward us, growing
darker, larger; you are ready
to swallow words from our mouths, and you never
offer life in return. He talks to
me but his language is lost in your humming, doors
slamming, keys turning, people coughing, lights switch
on and off on and off. I dream you
an opened mouth calling me in, I see
nothing, I hear chairs
lifting, a cart shimmering, echoes roll
over me in thunder, hands pull me
down, my fingers
push in melting wax, trace the
heavy eyelids on tombs, the cross
stabbed into the ground for our breathing; a chord begins
and I am pulled down past my own
voice to a hum in
my body. He covers my
hand but it is air to me, (you are the expecting stone pushing). I
guess he talks about reason, explanations, how
purple light can be caught and magnified, how
stone cannot chisel a metaphor, and a
poem cannot fill a lowered world. He
photographs me in front of the poets’ corner, talking
about his next suspicion, it all
rumbles back to us in small doses: we
will drown in a yawn of lifetimes, one
after another. HOME Sitting
on the sofa, heads
up across from each other in our new suits, I
could tell you that you are finally my mother, my father. I
could tell you to stop sifting through each pause, each
comma to find us in our godlike positions, for
here it is: What
happens when nothing replaces home, and
yet walking in the front door is not the same? The
stars have moved slightly, skin
sags on every myth earth
cracks between our stories and
our skeletons. I
could ask you for an outdated word: truth. But
you have only a memory of that, your
word now is “style” or “competition” while
generosity creaks away and I
remember the old days when it was sometimes there to
suck on like a breast or a cock. You
put your drink on a coaster (of course) and I pretend
every word you say is
friendship. But
what is wrong with this picture? Am I
still nodding or lingering at the monster
on the back of your head? Are my
hands slipping down your suburban carpet, and
through your formica skin? Why
does your monster look so familiar? I knew
you once. Before
we needed videos to remind us of our bodies, before
there was a need to measure our car shine against
our neighbors’. We
thought the world was the enemy in our
college formulas and scripts of what
an artist should be. But
the distance of the ocean is what it should be and
the sand will move when possible, never
demanding to own the moment like we do; we
have our calendars telling us we are
still in the same spot, counting
each hair on our heads; it is
very important to prove what you have. We
would look at the ocean, in the old days, and
say, “It could be calmer, it could be smaller, darker. It
could be walked on by anyone at all.” You
are now glancing through the newspaper, you
can’t find that mirror you created, you
can’t find the person with two
children in the back yard, you
can’t remember their names, and
you can’t find the shining titles, the
slippery counter, the full refrigerator or the
motionless dining room ticking. I can
see the many ways to a lobotomy: a map
of beauty once followed, brings peace,
beauty, and a new version of truth. You
can walk out of the closet and
match a thought one to another, you
will shake your hips in front of me throwing
beer bottles around the room until
tomorrow. I
believed you once like I believed myself, and
our script was shaped in pretending and
the set grew into your house and
mine, my car
and my father’s car, the
lawns talking in your mother’s smokey voice your
father telling us which direction the
river flows; and
there’s no way out of this one, friend, except
with our mask dying, repeating
the song, “we
want to be normal with babies on our hipbones and thumbs in our mouths,” we
place a water glass on a polished coffee table that
will never be destroyed. Four Women I. While shopping for her trousseau, the word came: a widow and not yet wed. Blond and bow-mouthed, her betrothed buried in two days. Nonna returned to her window seat in the shop and remained there— a black bird crocheting lace. By day, she dressed the women in silks and gabardine, wools and crepe. At night, she wrapped herself in black satin and waited for the reedy cry of his clarinet. Until another came: a man from the fields with hair black as mourning, eyes like lapis. No philosopher, he worked her father’s farm and picked a mandolin under a star-stitched sky. God
created woman so man would
not be alone, Francesca. Why
don’t you marry? Sad-eyed wishbone, she married him. Oh silent crows. In the grape arbor, two stone figures embraced. II. Stone to stone, they built a home. You, mother, the stone lodged between
them: whispering
stone, stepping
stone, rock under water, sharpening
stone, the son he never had, the
sister she lost to influenza. He barked out orders to you: no
lipstick, no late movies, no boys at home. But she advised respect and explained his
scorn, poor bastard child. Then
she shared her secret, hidden
in a bridal purse, a
photo of a clarinet player. Mother, you stitched lace into
the worn corners of their lives. When men called through the parlor
window, you
barely looked up from Nonna’s sewing machine, your
hands kneading velvets under a steel foot. You sewed yourself Chanel suits, drove
your father’s black Buick, sailed
for the continent. In Venice, ear pressed against a stone
bridge, you
listened for men’s sighs. Tossing
lire into the Grand Canal, you saw rose
petals rising from rock bed. If
men broke your heart, you never told, you,
the jade stone warm in their hands. She took care of us and then it was her
turn. III. You saw your future in a jeweler’s velvet
box: a
cut white stone winking. In the prism, a tall, dark and handsome
life, a
doctor’s wife, at 29, what more was left? To wander in the rose dusk streets of
Venice? To watch life, hot nodule of glass, swell at the tip of a glassblower’s rod? You took the ring and forgot that stone
bridges sigh. Forgot the ship to France, breath warm in
your ear. Only yes did you remember, the yes yes yes of your mother’s cry. And cry!
Bloodstones spilled from between your legs, a daughter first
among four. Me, the dark clot at your breast, red jasper sprinkled in my hair. Through the years, you stood in a shadow, a rook’s wings flapping about your head. You rarely talked of Venice, the curved embrace in a ship’s ballroom. Instead, you spoke of birds: why
house sparrows nest in ancestral trees, how
a collared dove beats her wings, when
the croaking raven mates for life. And then you offered this: a man who loves you more than you love him, yes . . . IV. From the deck of the vaporetto, I watched the pigeons of
San Marco rise, a spray of stones hurled into
the sky. I left behind the doges’ palace and gondolas that glide like black swans to
see the island of lace. In five years of marriage, I have always looked back, then as now, to a city of my mother’s memory where I returned with a husband. Wary of stone bridges that sighed, I was lost in a maze of canals, each
turn ending at the same footbridge. He found light in a ghetto courtyard, where
barbed-wire walls and
synagogues still stood. Lodestone, husband, he pulled me forward across
a lagoon to Burano, where fishing boats lined the beach in a string of coral and tourmalines. Overhead, birds slipped in and out of
clouds like
black stitches. And women sat in doorways, their hands poised
in lace. Here grandmother learned the secrets of
the punta buranese, the patience of drawn thread, strands twisted into the spine of a shell or
blooming roselines, a
web of capillaries, white on white, engendering
life in relief. Lace, intricate as memory, a screen for
love, it
is a mask through which I often peer. In a church in Burano, I saw a painting of
the three Maries, the face of the youngest shrouded
in lace. A man who loves you, who would do anything for you, what more do you want? V. Daughter, floating
in an underworld, the
other side of skin, you, all blue veins and cellophane, can
you hear me? When you ask me of love, how
will I answer? Will I press bloodstones, precious family jewels, into your small hands and say nothing? Or will I tell you of your father’s relentless pursuit of me, of what he
found when he scaled a Chinese wall, bramble of roses, purple fists like your
own, defensive,
untouched buds, and how, after years of tending, sweet
talk, he made them bloom wide-mouthed and pink, his only need to lean into those same
mouths and
breathe. And so we have been as gardener and rose
. . . Or will I tell you the other story, of
love found in a small brick house, under
the rose, where I saw myself in eyes of blue topaz, an
otherwise perfect wife dressed
only in dusk’s light, where the breadth of my life seemed only
as wide as a mahogany spool bed, where I was born again and again and
the rock heart learned to sing O . . . where I answered yes
yes yes to
another’s cry? Daughter, birthstone beating, are
you listening? Say
yes. At the Gate At Castellamare’s gate, women sew stories
into cloth, tales
from the Cammarata caves, murderous mountains where the sons of
farmers wait, perched
like red hawks, to ambush the carabinieri and avenge
Sicily’s poor. Widows
all, the women embroider vestments of prayer, the dead’s
shrouds, and
mock the figure in the window, Via Gracchi No. 3,
Mistress Alessandra. Eyes
like topaz, mouth a wild plum, she waits for her lover to
return, to swoop from the hill caves and enter the dark house with almonds,
wine, nespole. At
night, men woo her with tales from the caves, a chance to
bury their faces in
her blue-black hair; She cares nothing of the fight, only for
word of him, the
red hawk soaring down the mountain, gliding on night
breezes to the open window
of her house. In bed, she calls his name, Falco, and
dreams the dream two
coupling in a cask of wine. The woman at Via Gracchi No. 3 dreams
still, old and
alone, the Mistress Alessandra. By day, she sits at the gate, blindly
embroidering linens
with shining threads: iridescent peacock plume, a silken
butterfly wing. She
listens for the secrets of passing school girls, the clucks of
market women, the
wind’s hollow call. Townsfolk call her La Cornachhia, the crow. She calls: “What
news from the Cammarata caves? Does the red hawk fly?” And the boys
taunt her: “Crow,
caves do not speak.” But then a man calls in a voice familiar
yet faint: “What
of the Cammarata caves?” And the Crow tells her own story, of a
winged lover, passion
outlawed, lost in a mountain fight. Overhead a red hawk circles. At the sound
of its cries, the
old woman lifts her face to an almond wind. Cataracts fall from
her eyes, Alessandra’s
sallow skin glows like honeydew and a mandolin plays in the
cave-dark house
of the mistress. My
Grandfather’s Bones Dear Papa, when we rode to Staten Island to visit the skirted lady with the torch, what lurked in your shaded eyes I didn’t
see? And in Venice, when you held me, feverish and shaking, did I mistake the tap tap
tap of a hair-trigger heart for love’s
disquiet? Your son told me you sold linens,
crisscrossing the country with a valise full of
samples. When I was old enough to ask, I didn’t. Walking from the subway, I would look
ahead and always see you standing at the
corner, on the front stoop, winter or summer,
waiting. Waiting for spring, months after your
death, I found the newspapers hidden in your old valise. They said you killed a man in February Nineteen Twenty-Nine. Disguised as
policemen, you and the boys cornered Bugsy Moran’s
gang in a Chicago depot for bootleg beer. At your funeral, Papa, six white-haired
men arrived to pay their respects to “Mister
Joe.” In Sicilian, the men called you
“padrone.” An honor earned on the streets of
Chicago? When they slid your gun-metal coffin into a marble drawer, the truth slid into
dust. And now I am left to read between the
lines, to fit what is remembered with what was
real: Papa dancing the tarantella with me. “Ravello was given the `honor’ so that he might avenge the murder of his
brother. Efforts to find the suspect have been
fruitless.” the dock The
dock is still behind the house, Built
before I was eleven. At
present it is not in use: It
ends where docks ought to begin. Last
month I turned forty-eight. By
inch, the years have shored up sand Until
the dock’s whole length, today, Does
not extend off the dry land. Papa
had the structure built Before
he bought the cabin boat. Two
parallel pilings formed a slip. I
watched the men nail to the last board. The
boy was awed by the dock’s piles. Such
long cigars! No ice-yeast raised The
form of our dock to the skies In
winter weather: those stayers stayed. To
the rival in me, a source of pride. One
chore I did not wish to shirk Was
to goosh in old shoes at low tide Out
on the brown-black spongy muck (Il fango! Attento! C’è il fango!) With
brush and can of creosote Preservative.
Oopleeoop—down’d go One
leg in il fango’s throat, Sleeooch—I’d
lurch out. “The creosote!” Papa’d
stamp on the dock. “It did not spill!” I’d
bark, and Mamma would rush out At
the ruckus. Her dread: the barnacles. Face,
chest, arms, shoulders stinging hot (Creosote
cooks in the sun, it’s oil) I
wore the splatter of liver spots Like
the Distinguished Service Medal. Papa’s
gusto for the cruiser Soon
died. Soon his business would Be
dead, and I’d take it like Judas, As
if papa had failed to be what a Dad should. And
as if my bad blood had walloped him worse Than
the bad luck he braved, his nagging stopped. One
night I was gone for forty-eight hours: Not
a word of reproach when I pulled into dock. La buon’ anima is at rest, Come
this September, fifteen years. The
memory of the man’s disgust With
the boy’s disrespect burns the tips of my ears. Too
late for amends, this taking stock. In
the time I had, I lacked the stuff To
do my sire justice. Like the dock’s My
span did not extend enough. visiting my
mother Last night, I visited my mother and all
the lies I’ve been telling myself about how this medicine will work and how she’s
going to get better are lies, and part of me knows it and the other part does
not want to believe it. Watching her I see her arm is thin and that she takes
two sips of lemonade after saying how thirsty she is, and then says she
doesn’t want any more. Laura has just given her Demerol and as
it takes effect, she perks up. She has dark brown smudges under her eyes and
her face is hollowed out. She has taken out her teeth, though she has always
boasted that she never takes them out, and she tells us stories non-stop, the
past filled with details she has never told us before. When I was born, my father walked down to
the grocery store on Fourth Avenue to call the doctor. meanwhile, she looked
down and there I was, my head and shoulders emerging. “What a surprise,” she
says. When Alessandro was born, she was in the
hospital in a basement delivery room and all the women were being taken in to
give birth but no one came to get her. She screamed until she got the
attention of a young intern who delivered the baby. The doctor never arrived.
Alex had a head full of black hair when he was born. She smiles and says, “I
took that young doctor’s hand and said, ‘Thank you. You are so good.’ I
wonder what happened to him? Maybe he’s dead. Well, God bless him, if he’s not
dead.” “You know,” she muses, “when you were
little babies, they had a nurse who took care, I brought you to the school
and she was there and she weighed you and measured you and gave you your
shots. She had this little book that she wrote in the weight and height and
which shots and then, she’d put in a gold star if the baby was well and had
grown. I kept that book. Used to take it out and look at it. So nice. All
those gold stars. I had it a little while ago, if it’s still there. Yeah, it
was nice,” she says and laughs. ma, who told
me you forgot how to cry Soothsayer, healer, tale-teller, There was nothing you could not do. In your basement kitchen, with the cracked brown and yellow tiles the sink on metal legs, the big iron stove with its pots
simmering, the old Kelvinator from 1950, the metal kitchen table and plastic
chairs. I’d watch you roll out dough for pastichelle, see your quick movements, “Be quiet,”
you’d say, and work at super speed. Today, when I walk into your hospital
room, you cry for a moment; then force composure on
your face. You do not speak of your illness, do not mention the doctor who tells you bluntly, “you have three months, at most, to
live.” Your shrewd, sharp eyes watch us, but you do not cry. Soothsayer, healer, tale-teller, always ready with a laugh and a story, ready to offer coffee, cakes, advice at your oval kitchen table, your chair pulled close and your hands always full. We are like little children gathered around your bed. Al, with his doctor’s
bag full of tricks and medicine, Laura, in
her white nurse’s uniform, her hands twisting, and me, my head full of words that here, in this antiseptic room, are no use, no use at all. We wait for you to get up out of that bed, to start bossing us around, the way you always did. Tell us a story with a happy ending, one in which the oil of Santo
Rocco that you put on your swollen belly each night works it elusive miracle. Soothsayer, healer, tale-teller. There was nothing you could not do. Tell us again how the bluebirds came to sing at your window that January, when Al was so sick all the doctors said he’d die. my sister When we were little, my sister climbed trees, disappeared after school with our cousin Philip and the other boys from our neighborhood. Extroverted and practical, she leaped into action, did not think too much. Quick and shrewd, she gloried in doing: the tree climbed; the tree house built; the baseball game played. When my sister turned 12, she grew into a size 36D. She walked languidly, laughing and joking with the other girls outside the school, but she came right home. The boys who had been her friends watched
her; they waved casually and turned away, but for a long time, they did not look at one another. The words for what they felt, slipped through their fingers, burning like sand at high noon. my brother’s
story My brother
strides into the examining room in his crepe-soled Rockport shoes. They are
tan-colored and match his brown pants; his white physician’s coat flaps
around his knees, and he walks in with his endearing, crooked smile and his
kind dark eyes and his rumpled thinning hair and his crooked front teeth. He
makes small talk, says “lie back, cough,” listens to my heart with his silver
stethoscope, plumbing the depths of my chest for signals, a language
mysterious to me as Braille. He draws blood into a thick vial, winces when he
hurts me, and writes out a prescription in his squiggly, illegible hand. My brother has
two tall sons, their Italian faces so similar people think they are twins. In
the old film of us when we are growing up, we look so much like his sons with
their long faces, their dark curly hair cut short as a cap to their heads,
their Roman noses, their crooked smiles. “Let nothing harm them,” I whisper
to any gods who will listen, my words fragile as the soap bubbles we blew
through metal rings when we were children ourselves and still believed that
magic circles could protect us from all harm. the time of
my father It was the
time of the smiling Americans On the job
and around the world, The time of
the nickel phonecall, The nickel
Coke, the two-cent tabloid, And the time
of that surrealist masterpiece The blizzard
of ’47. The Bronx in
’47 (I can see it all) Was a place
where, if the redfaced meinheers Had suddenly
reappeared on White Plains Road, They would
have stood beneath the El— Sucking
their clay pipes, Scratching
their pantaloons—and said “Ja, it
smells like a Bronx should smell.” It was the
time of the big Yankees, The
delicatessens, the picaresque pushcarts, The time of
clean gray buildings And taxis
gleaming in the thoroughfares, And here and
there a street of small neat houses Where small neat-featured
people lived Whose words
were little metal balls, Where in
Grandma’s tiny apartment on the weekends I slept in
the bureau drawer (in the funny papers), Where my
father and his workmen put up walls, Where a wall
would fall on him—and on all of us— But that was
still years and years away, After we had
moved away. It was the
time of my father, Who was born
of legends he never heard And songs he
couldn’t sing, With a face
half Poe’s, with half the ghosts, With one eye
sharp and one eye almost dead, With a hat
that never came off outside the house (His men
never knew he was bald until he was dead), Whose arms
and throat in summer were baked red With a flat
white shirt of skin beneath, Who spent
rich hours in the bathroom, Who could
squinch through the bathroom window then, Who wiped my
nose and cursed the banks In 1947 in
the Bronx. coming of
age I was
sitting on the roof with my grandmother. I was seven
years old. Beyond the roof It was
summer. It was night. It was the Bronx. She told me about
Columbus. A great man, A very great
man. I didn’t understand. Everyone in
the world was an Italian, Everyone was
a Catholic. Then I was ten And the
Irish nuns told us all about Columbus. Nobody ever
mentioned that he was Italian, A guinea.
Everyone was very nice. How Italian
was I then? A handful of words— Counting to
ten, hello, goodbye, fangul— What
everybody knew. My grandmother Sent me to
buy a jar of parmigian’, I asked the
man for a brand called Farmer John. Inside the
house I heard names like Sinatra, Names like
DiMaggio. Everybody knew them. I was twelve
years old. Beyond the wall It was
Westchester. I sounded like a goat. In right
field I missed everything, and the Irish fumed. The priests
had big red faces and big voices, They poured the
Latin out like water faucets. I was an
altar boy. Beyond the Church It was
baseball weather. They told us about Don Bosco And Dominic
Savio. Even then it was funny. I found out
other names, like Pirandello, Like
Leopardi. Everybody laughed. No one had ever
heard of them. Flukey ways, That was the
line on me, and nobody argued. I was
fifteen. I stayed in the house all summer. Sacco and
Vanzetti, these were my people. Men who sat
in bars all day and were whispered about, These were
my people. In nameless Sicilian towns Made out of
solid rock, men spat in the dust And glared
at strangers. I was one of these. I couldn’t
understand ten words they said, Old men
after fifty years of construction gangs And
fruitstands and barbershops and railroad gangs Still sounding
like last week’s boatload. In the street They glared
at strangers. I was one of them. Old men in
dirty caps and cotton shirts Were all
around me, inside me, when I was twenty. They dressed
up and sang at weddings, they pinched my cheeks. Alone in the
parking lot in a new suit of clothes I grunted
spontaneously in time with the band. in the
street When I was a little boy they were always
there, Hard men in the street. They had skinny eyes and hands like
woodcuts. They walked straight Ahead. They were proud, like amputees. They touched no one. Day opened up like doors to let them
pass. I watched them pass, Knitting my eyebrows tight to make the
peak Of a workman’s cap. How I wished I could be like them. Now I am like them, Heading down the street like a torpedo, Cigarette in my face Tilting upward to bugger the world. A face like a rock, My rockfaced grandfather would say when
he yelled, A face like shit. Men come the other way with eyes like
nickels, With watery lips. Dogs with jingling collars cross the
street. Hi Ho, a face like shit. what they
beheld Zippered in his fuzzy bag My fifteen-month-old son Duckwalks Across the rug. One finger barely jutting From an unbaked hand, He gives his other hand to me And leads me, Turning like radar, Quacking variations on What’s this, what’s that? Cat I tell him (not Pussy, I’m the daddy now) And through the window Tree. He smiles at me, Roundjawed, assured, So dangerous an audience, Believing every word. what cymbals
and symbols do shake? What vines do
you eat, caterpillar become poet,
one who desires to be divine? what wine do
you drink, Dionysus, that you make us dance
with the vines tickling our nakedness as we clap
our hands to make time pass? what songs do you sing,
Orpheus, to make us follow with caterpillar, unicorn,
animals born of the sacred being, angels consistently following?
the soul of the hand, the soul of the foot, vibrations
related to all blood flowing sources, what do you touch, what
do you reach, what do you teach as the dancers swoon? soon
the music increases its tempo and the whirling brides and husbands
of darkness and light, of vines and the seas, bring to the
festival the stirrings that urge all to break into Spring. that which
is related to faith, hope, and charity When I think of how
the different colors of vegetables absolutely
please me I get religious, I think we’re meant for
each other, Cezanne for the colors of his
victorious mountain; the humming bird for the colors of the mouth of
its flower; the pageant of the purple of the eggplant; the radiance
of the red of the tomatoes, the radiance of the delicate pale yellow glow
of the slender squash, the freckled freshness of the zucchini green
just handed to me; I know there are attractions that have been
in the nourishing process; I know that Mary wanted a child
and so the Annunciation was born, I know that the Sun has much
to do with the rainbow, that the red cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore at
the center of Florence attracts thoughts of God; that vowels have color,
that benevolent beliefs color our hopeful achievements. A late Italian
Renaissance Scene of a peasant husband
and wife with Fruit, Vegetables, Flowers From him to
her and back and forth kisses and above
them dangling clusters of grapes, cherries,
berries, strawberries nearby, entanglement of weeds,
baskets nearby laden with fruit. A harvesting
of fruit and vegetables by lovers leaves them
thoroughly exhausted for a little more than a few
warm moments and then recreation is active again. peasant
pleasant work Raking Raking Raking, Making the Rake’s
Progress, Sweating, Sweetheart, I picture it, I do it,
bending over, picking
up grass, smelling it, finding it, feeling it,
warm, it’s agriculture
at its best; believe me the earth has memories,
has messages,
vibrations get to us, we sweat, sweetheart, we strip
somewhat for
summer work. You say go to it, work at it, mow, mosey,
relax and
then return to Raking
Raking. Your eyes
crave to find a
way into the
reality of longings
which nullify
themselves into nothing or
something. Your eyes
lie in wait next to the
daffodils who watch
the reaper and know
“the still sad music of
humanity.” While you
watch, I long. for a
Modigliani or a
Venetian artist holding on
to me beneath his
coat as his hair covers my
cheeks in gentle
mantle warming me
in the night’s mist penetrating
my every bone as my body
leaves me, as his hands, his long
thumbs, press
against my cheeks and his
others pressing
against the back of my head (until by
the feel of his every effort I just have
to let go) and then you
come back to me hardly a
woman working
youself into my
brain stealing a
wayward glance you ask if I
missed you. “Of course,”
I say. (But I can
never say “yes”) So I
remember Saint Francis loving the
birds on his shoulder and who went to teach the
poor in the country while Saint
Clare humbled prepared the
meal for
returning priests and nuns as Saint
Francis in a letter reminded her
to also feed the poor and to be
careful of missing the whole
reason for Christ’s
being--- as the words
of my son in the next
room chattered in
their almost eleven years
of age and in the
innocent meanness of
it all. You fumble
through the night in all its
silly shadows of signs that can and
cannot be only in my
thoughts. You have a
mother as my son and I watch
you speechless as
my pen- point leads
nowhere leaving me
expecting stubborn tight-lipped
and even if it is
the birth of Christ what of
it?-------- —Here we are
waiting for some
birth— or one more
day that may not
last as your curls
wisp into the night and the sax
plays on and the dawn
longs to unfold the
morning dew relaxing on
its back calmly
watching for the space to fill “as players not arrangers strangers and lovers friends and foes never before seen never to be again.” Maybe it’s as
the song says. “It can never
be arranged: someone else has set
the stage” and the final
words cannot be said as my husband
runs his hand down the back of
me (that hand
that blasts its tune into my face,
neck, arms and back to the
lips of me.) The urgency the
melancholy of it all--- Well, even
you said it. “Why say
anything?” The music
drowns another
pen-point into a white
sheet and the words
blur and fade. The phone
squeals my mother’s
pulse from room to
room as she waits
impatiently to peruse the new cream
colored punch bowl and its
golden rim next to the
russet amaryllis blasting its
scent into my son’s
white socks filled with
toes as the
chestnuts roasting remind me of
a time when I was
sitting on my mother’s lap with a
roaring fire in the hearth as she prayed
to the Virgin mary
to make her give up smoking
cigarettes. My father
has been dead a
little (over six months) while my
husband plans his
schedule and my son sleeps
calmly flat his stomach
on the couch and I wait. Another year will come. |