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POETRY By: Dennis Barone, Blaise Cirelli, David Citino, Vira J. De Filippo, Joanne L. Detore, Luciana Polney, Tom Romano, Francesca Canadé Sautman, Marc Scarcelli, Adriana Suriano, and The bitter
seeds of work We were far
from that masonry of the vertical, the city.
Its lattice work was as perfect as a
spider’s web. Imagination is a mimic of the real.
“This,” I said, “is not real.” We had
forgotten the dog patches of York Avenue. The cry was
beneath us when sweat was between us. With our
heaves, our goose-pimples sighed. I had
forgotten your name, but had vowed to die to prove
that you were alive. The city: that romance
of the real, that cyst to pick thumbnail to
thumbnail. “Let’s leap,” I shouted,
“to stand at the summit of these stairs for
the stars are impossible when unseen.” “We must
remain,” you replied, “in ever diminishing circles.”
Outside the street urchins stuck to the sides of
bald tires. We hid in each other and avoided
the sun as well as the night. Red with
passion, we reached our peak through prayer and sweat.
Our clocks, once the night owl’s hoots, have become
two weak hearts beating. The grass grows long
about our stones. In the gymnasium you found me
practicing for an unnamed war. We are far from
that masonry again. We are free. The Moon
Bleeds Perfectly Squared corners perfect queen poster bed a woman and Miro live there ravenous hair; insatiable looking for a fix a
man a
career perfect
children faith. so tasteful pomegranates on blond wood; sun ripened streamlets of red ooze the moon bleeds perfectly. Cracked
Walls When you left for your sanity, we were afraid of the cracked walls crying all night for
you returning from the hospital you made novenas to Mary lighting candles in
the hushed darkness now your pilgrimages are to the mall darkness overcome by white-flower days living at peace in the heart of the robot open each
day from ten until nine. Into the
Arms of Children If I had known of the edges that existed before the two of us
touched, perhaps the distance between us today would be softened. you knew what I did not that freedom was more important than
security that the ineffable joy of the sun held more promise than a straight path. today, when I walk my steps are weighted bound in barbed wires. your walk is lighter, your pain is flung off into the open spaces, into the arms of children. Smooth
Descent There is a comfort in descent the filmy milk-white roadsigns sighing ash brown grass along the
hillside the earth in fallow rest. wipers flick the warm rain and it sheets off softly into the
jetstream remaining for the road to deposit it in a shallow watery-vein. dear angel, warm the creamy stars and St. Christopher come at our request to guide weary travellers long-ago lost journeying from the fruitless harvest. this trip like others that came before is sewn into the pillows of our dreams and we rise and feed it to our children whispering lies and promising more. Bleeding
Through Abject Grace It’s a bleeding through abject grace bleeding from a place where
tenderness cannot emerge ripping through tendons and stringy
muscle tissue bleeding from white aspens shivering
together in a clump drenching entire rainforests filling farmlands that cannot sustain the
earth’s decay bleeding in moon craters flowing through black cable phone lines oozing out of telephone mouthpieces seeping silently from video monitors bleeding for the pope for
all endangered species streaking red through alpine meadows covering school yard children with
its sticky hot slime running down the thighs of
tailored women’s business suits mixing in all the right circles planning carefully for its early
retirement bleeding for the homeless for its incest issues for junkies who have reached their end dead
without permission sorrowful like the stars older than it knows flowing into salt shocked inlets comfortable in red tinctured pools resting in pocket canyons sister Mary
appassionata Fascinating, we say today, which
comes from Latin fascinum, the
angelic little god hugely,
devilishly erect you
can handle still today at
Pompeii, to poke out evil eyes or
get yourself knocked up, if
that’s your desire—and what, with
the possible exception of
the divine and cosmic Hers, can
be more enthralling than
an eternally stone-hard His? Zeus
chose the swan and bull because
they’re really hung. A
thousand Renaissance churches claimed
to own a piece of
the Redeemer’s precious prepuce, granddaddy
of all relics, it
being the only mortal part he
didn’t take with him on
the trip back home to
the seventh heaven. Look
at the many paintings, Madonna
and Child, Mary parting the
Bambino’s swaddling clothes with
a knowing Mona Lisa smile, or
read it in The Book, Genesis
through Revelation, Eve,
Lot’s wife, the mother of
the baby Solomon tried to
halve, Mary Magdalene: why
is the God of us all all man? the death of
domenico modugno The newspaper
claims that so popular over the decades has your “Volare” grown some want to
make it the new Italian national anthem. And why not? Still it seems to me
the day things Italian-American came out of the closet and owned up, too far
beneath the Quattrocento to be
calculated of course but still miles higher than bathtub shrines of painted
Madonnas holding pudgy Bambino
cupids, male fantasies of heavenly mothers, perfect sluts. Still it plays in
the darkening room where my memories are stacked teetering against the walls
nearly to the spider-webbed ceiling, and the old turntable wobbles and spins.
Volare. Wo-o Cantare. Wo-o-o-o. Fly.
Sing. To do one was to practice the other, I believed. Lyrics inspired by
figures navigating Chagall’s azure and mystical heaven, the obituary goes on
to say, star-eyed peasant lovers and mules afloat above the shtetls soon to be drowned out by the
thunder of panzers, click of cyanide pellets, bitter smoke of the great
ovens. We can leave the confusion and
all disillusion behind. Fields like those of your native Puglia (though
for years, a deputy in parliament and champion of the disabled but unable to
accept your crippled self, you pretended to by mysterious, a Sicilian gypsy),
a memory from some distant world receding down lanes twisting to the village
and away. Nel blu dipinto di blu,
the actual title, In Blue Painted Blue,
but today we remember only the soaring chorus. Vo-la-re. What did I learn from you? That flying alone is
dangerous, and thus we must try together. The sin of Icarus, after all, is
that he forgot his father and filled heaven with the sun. Just like birds of a feather, a rainbow
together we’ll find. Volare. Wo-o. Cantare. Wo-o-o-o. Birds, archangels
and all the communion of saints learn to confound gravity and time, to grow
light and full of song enough to lift into the profound, pristine blue, to
make their great escape. And now, I read and understand, you. the sloth of
salerno Here I am,
denim-vested junkie never worked
for anyone, not
insolent, not wise yet solid at
this corner. I live under
the pay telephone plastic bubble hanging up
my life breathing
this modern Salerno in San Francesco
Square. And once I
let out a gasp of my speedy
cigarette, I am anyone,
soccer player engineer or
accountant whatever
that moves in the
promenade jungles at night. Till dawn
I’ve watched boxcars of
heroin ride darkly on rails of
that old kiddie train.[1] The cargo
ships letting out steam into what was
once the public beach and at other
times I’ve watched them carry not a
baleful of straw. Slowly with
dragonlike trade, I learned it
begins with status but boredom
will not stop, there is
always another young banker looking for
that open car parked on the wrong
side of the street at 3 a.m. Another
woman wearing eyeglasses as important
as her signature, wonders
about the American pirate video her
boyfriend has rented for tonight. Too busy
voguing in their homes, they never
noticed me under the bubble. I’m cold,
straight-haired and plain, a delinquent
with canvas bags filled with
18K snatched chains because
their stale mothers will it so. I happen to
know that they love it when I flick
my tongue on the antique clasps— an opening
for dope to last me two days. It keeps the
visions of the green cross mountain[2] bearing
bright over the beach. I am afraid
when San Francesco[3] and the
Zookeeper get here, they will
find us already in our crypt. TOMATO
PLANTS [This poem is dedicated to Papa, Philip Scaparo] I
hear you wheezing in
and out. I
see your cheeks puff
and deflate as
you gingerly shuffle your
way to the chair, unsure
about your footing about
the dependability of your
legs and feet. “I
can’t do anything anymore,” you
say, breathing heavily running
a marathon in a few steps. I
tell you about the bathtub stopper that
doesn’t stop the water. You
tell me you could have fixed it, then. Now
it makes you angry, frustrated. All
the machines that have stopped, are
broken, need
a nut or a bolt— they
are your frustrations now when
they were your joys. I
see no grease under your fingernails now,
the heavy, black gook that I so despised, I
miss it when
I see your nicely manicured nails. You
keep impeccably clean, your
pants over a year old, still
crisp and clean. No
phantom spots, no
telltale signs of lawn-mower gears
and motors, no
brown patches at the knees where
soaked-in soil embedded
itself, planting
yourself, as you did, in
your garden with tomato plants, parsley,
basil and beans. “He
should have planted those tomato plants two weeks ago,” you
tell me, looking out the window at
my father in his tiny
garden. Thousands
of feet above and away
from you, in
a plane going back to college, I
think of you and your gardens as
I pass by a quilt work of lands marbled
brown and green grand
and rich with sweat and
a love of hard work, tilled
together like yours were. And
when I plant my garden in
the spring on
bent knee I
will think of you. Of
tomato plants twining around
the poles I’ve pushed
in, like crutches, to support weak
plants—like you supported me so
many times, and like I wish I could support
you. to lucia
chiavola birnbaum The small brass female
fertility statue is faceless on the window sill, next to a tall green unlit
candle facing the sun, a statue of Buddha and an Inca God with
defined faces seven power beads, from a Puerto Rican
botanica. Seven orange, seven green,
seven yellow, seven red, seven brown, seven white, seven
turquoise wrapped around its body complete the altar Thinking I was protected I slept dreaming of
elephants retrieving the collective
memory recalling the one
hundredth morning. This morning was different I lost an earring and tasted coffee made in a
new pot, watered flowering plants made no phone calls as I lit a red candle, burnt sage scented
incense, the prayer beads around my
neck broke. Seeds fell and
dispersed everywhere. I stopped chanting searched for meaning in
the scatter of the seeds, wondered why the fertility Goddess
had no face. for mom Flowers arrive, FTD; white roses open wide petals layered, sweet as a creamy multi-tiered
cake. Pink tulips sound their
horn. Small, violet star burst, dare to shine. Others, whose names I can’t
recall, Round out the arrangement, open wide to greet and smile,
flowers, and needing to know why they were born to bloom for a short time, are alive chosen by my mother’s
florist, to teach, a gift that heals what was dying. Flowers tell of neither
endings nor death. It’s form that changes. Not love which, like a flower, blooms, decomposes and if returned to earth fertilizes life to come. acknowledgment, that it is form that
changes and not love which like flowers post bloom, decompose and if returned to earth fertilize the life and
love to come. SURE THING I want to feel the blazing bullet in your stomach when your older brother triggers the pistol and the Nepolitan countryside is alive with your bogus death. If I can survive that moment in 1910 I’ll listen, startled and frightened to the crushing bone and tendon when your leg catches under the rolling stone of the grain press and the donkey sensing wrongness in the harness stops its incessant circling sparing your life. In America four years later I’ll feel bitten winter air sear your lungs as you run railroad ties to the brickyard where you sweat beside your father helping him stack bricks for one hour then run home to breakfast before school, wet and supple under your coarse woolen clothes as you sit by the coal stove steam rolling from your shoulders. That evening I’ll smell your father’s wine breath and hear his obstinate growl crash into your ears. I’ll feel his open hand more fist than palm slap high on your cheek glaze your eyes with tears. Ten years later when you take your place in the brickyard I’ll feel your grim young twenties muscles pull at dense bricks not long out of a kiln. At lunch I’ll know the cocksureness of your rolled up sleeves, crossed arms, tilted cap as you stand with men and look dead into the photographer’s lens. And not long after I’ll watch you settle the score at home as a pot of sauce bubbles on the stove and your mother wrings a dishtowel in her chapped hands, begging you to
stop, but my arms are yours as you push your father across the kitchen floor, he fuming and hate-filled but giving way, you punctuating with a last shove the message that he let your gentle work-tough mother be. Pain will stab my back when soaring music opens your eyes at three a.m., black and white images playing over your sleep-worn face in a twenty-four hour movie house in
Akron your suitcase belt-tied beneath your seat you deciding then and forever that this man was meant for more than brickyard piece work. I’ll know the rush of the gamble as I feel the smoothness of felt, stick, stroke, coin and ivory as you place the cue ball ready to break again the positive unknown of the gamble as I feel the sharp edge of cards under my finger and your submerged anticipation as you win with three kings then win again later because of them. And I can’t help but know the certainty of your sure thing moxie at the end of the Depression as you sit in the smug banker’s office and agree to put up all you own before he’ll bet thousands on you. I’ll feel the wrinkles of the first
dollar bill hear the ring of the cash register see that first customer bring the brimming shot of whiskey to his lips. And just two years later we decline the banker’s directive to take a seat. We stand by his desk, no longer Italian immigrant, but American business man come now to call the banker’s action with a last tenfold payment. He holds the check with both hands and his ears burn. We
do not remove our hat. going home To my father In memory of Viola Liuzzo Do not ask who or what I am I come from a land of
shadows Hills burnished by
bleaching sun Specked with women clad in
black Shadows of the proud
cypress trees I come from rusty port
towns their feet soaking in
acrid waters singing the rich stench of
fish to the wind I come from ship decks
akimbo cruel stepmother, the sea
turned vomit in the clatter of broken
hearts and hopes Hush, little baby Beware of night’s creaking hinges They slam the shadows’ door shut And wayward spirits Keep you for another year They did not discover America They were exiled there . . . Boston streets were
slashed In the pain of flesh that
did not speak the language of its bruising A body falls from a
skyscraper just sailing out the
window accidentally Sacco and Vanzetti impaled
on a marble vault flickering stars in a man-made firmament of
dollar bills when Shapiro or Scamorza were numbers dangling on a
chain twisted from slag and
rivets I come from a small
formica kitchen table stained with the blood of
tomatoes cradling a coffee cup with its lemon peel curl
and 20 year old crack chair backs laden with
sheets of golden pasta a sink redolent with
anchovies to be cleaned between table and humble garden I was born from the ripe womb Of age-old famine They call us connected and write our story in sprays of gunfire Connected we are to the sweetness of dusty
oleanders to harsh rocks polished by the hooves of
sheep and goats and to waves of picket
signs crashing against steel
framed inequities cutting deep into the channels of the
high sea I come from a slippery
staircase shined to honeyed
perfection Nonna’s stockings low on
her aching legs the tireless arms of women bringing light to dead
wood Hungry camera weapon of an uninvited
observer who crashed the wedding
party soul-steals us in a bloodshed of mangled
images glued to our skin fists punch raw meat into sausage
casings an oilspill on ancient
portraits fading in hesitant sepia our words remain buried in the anger of our
bellies that remember the pain of food I come from a handful of
pepper seeds saved to flavor food and the glow of bread in streets scrubbed by
poverty splashed with sheets of
dried tomato the scent of illicit grape
mash rising from dank cellars Everything is changing, we
hear, Our towns are lost in the
ache of fragile memory. the angry voices of men
rise in fists of lead they fill the streets with
burning white shadows Who are these men? I do
not know them. Their mouths spew bullets
of hate they rob a mother of her
son they paint the sidewalk in
desecration shots tear the tension of
the air a young woman runs out
. . . she held him in her
arms almost a child herself whispering ninna nanna to a young man’s dying
blood Who are these men? We do
not know them. they spit up the blood and
guts of their own people they fiercely unlearn the
ways of a stern land exiled for centuries
within its own boundaries marred with hanging trees on forests of spikes, heads harvested by Murat’s
armies in a deadly French kiss they echo the boots of
stormtroopers who held the burnt ochre
of our fields hostage sold the golden stars of
the sea to the Beast for a fistful
of coin and stole away our people to the North’s cold plains exiled, herded once again My grandfather built walls
with mortar, recited page after page of Homer and painted a world of
shadows on canvas, flecked with
shreds of light: a ripe fruit, his wife’s face. My father walked miles to
study travelled the world to
meet the hunger of others and twisted reluctant
matter into shapes tempered only in the fires
of his eye seeking the beauty of
shells, of trees, of somber cities, a child, I sat long hours staring
at a painting of his dark-faced immigrants
cloaked in black and brown huddled together clutching at the sunburst
of their forsaken hills, for shelter they had the
dusky cypress, their eyes lost in endless
shadows . . . They taught
me to love They taught
me to read To be silent And to rebel[4] I come from my people I come from their shadows I come from their pain Women of the
Shadows: the year 1992 Standing
in the crack of a door quietly dressed
in black watchful
eyes bearing
witness: skin
not “olive” but
tinged in
flecks of blue, brown and gray you
were called women of the shadows women
of a cursed land of
hungry fields and muted stone you
bent your backs in the blazing sun and
your heads raised high baskets
overfilled with laundry the
weight of copper water pots their
pummeled surface polished
with sand a hundred times by
women’s muscular hands hooking
shreds of light, a
fieldhand’s sparse lunch wrapped
in a worn, faded tablecloth closed
with three knots only
your fingers knew the secret of
unraveling, stained
by birthpangs your
hands streaked
and cracked from
washing clothes in
icy mountain springs the
thick musty scent of cooked tomato clinging
to your hair you
filled empty tables with
the blessing of food and
damp rooms with the aroma of coffee year
after year you
remembered your dead the
blunt sound of hammers on tiny coffins the
laughter of children felled under
the wilting breath of
malaria and dysentery eyes
shod of light in wrinkled faces crossing
the dusky waters with
their bundle of memory clutched
in gnarled hands death’s
parching eye the
unforgiving bite of hunger and
the crack of a bullet tenderly
cradled in
the harsh folds of
a sundrunk landscape you
remembered your dead and
reared the living sailed
with them to
an unyielding land, centuries
of sorrow floating in
the inner cells of
your eyes . . . I am born
of you, I will never disown you, women of
the shadows . . . And You, lapped
in the forbidden furrows of our wanting, entrenched
in an endless battlefield waylaid
in a labyrinth of silence, streets
are our outback and our danger zone, full
of treacherous crossings, now
deserted by the witches of old, who
muttered curses and knotted charms tracing
with bay leaves the alphabet of trees spelling
out the colors of bird feathers under
the cover of night, crackling
with insects calling, churning
up the smell of wounded plants, women
of the shadows . . . I want to make love to you wade in your underground springs eat the grain of your open field mirrored in the crows’ shiny wings let unripe wheat sing us a shadow
song let a cool gray sky shelter us in
pain Bones
and glass splintered the dawn Tire
marks traced unholy prayers restricting
travel in our own veins and
the battle was met so
women could unbirth the
incantation of their womb unsew
bruised lips thirsting
for the freedom of their bleeding Blood
trickled on the weary pavement rusty
coat-hangers mangled in the gutter stream. Blood,
woman’s blood was soaked up by the earth, painting
the town red, but we didn’t dance This land
is your land this womb
is my womb it belongs
to you to the
women of the shadows amorously
harrowed bursting
with rich fallow it is a
battleground planted
with angry fists strewn with
gold crosses And You I
want to taste the seedlings of your open field my
mouth needs to wander in your deep loam as
our eyes seek the blessing of a friendly cipher the
crow lashes the sky with his knife-wing . . . Blood ran
down streets screaming
with disbelief, torn
up and splintered, a
house divided a
place of no return where
you only eat a
belly full of anger, the
rainbow blasted to smithereens bayonets
and no butter, a
bleeding gash in the icy moon, the
city a gigantic carcass unraveling
ancient inequities, defiant
eyes reverberating the
exacting ceremonial of the arsonist, fifty
dead a
small price for four cops; “an
eerie peace descends over LA . . .” there
is no peace no
justice no
peace this
peace is a charred lie and
you can’t live a lie streets
turned to ashy
shadows are
bristling with gun barrels, screeching
with tanks and
women wade through the smoke fingernails
bleeding for
fragments of the bitter lives they
etched from the ungiving land, a
fractured mirror, a
smudged portrait a
torn lace doily from back home a
porcelain painted with
strangely unfamiliar flowers . . . Women of the shadows I
said I would never disown you mourning
a memory traced in blood buried
in the scorched fields of our silence, the
Ancestress welds our bones to
one piece of barren sun-whipped land in
one bleached yet aching spinal chain mad
with the arousal of wounded sinews we
will carve our names forever in
the city’s burning scaffolds . . . And I still want to make love to
you in an open field what does the
water whisper with a hiss, as
it glides down the bed does it confide
in the trees by the shore, for
it seems that the trees
whisper back with a rustle of their leaves • what does the
water say with a burble, as
it rolls over rocks does it tell
where it’s been to the stones in
the way, to the listening sand • what does the
water yell as it rushes
along, taking leaves and small sticks, do they join it
in song, of the places
it’s going, the things that will be • what does the
water shout with a whoosh, to
the land all around, as it flies further down does it try to
pass wisdom to those who
won’t listen • what does the
water scream with deafening
roar as it finds
itself suddenly upon the air borne what final word,
what terrible fear I only wish that
I could hear to die Number
crunching, pencil pushing, money is success, spouse and
kids, house and car, dreams are frivolous, morning
paper, shopping trips, TV owns the mind, careful
guise, elaborate lies, to keep them all in line, afraid to
think, afraid to act, Big Brother owns your head, to live the
life you’re told to lead, to Die before you’re Dead Working six
days Hunched over the kitchen table wearing your navy blues faded and worn. Six days a week at 6 am you comb your wavy gray hair wear your ugly blue uniform for the vacation you never take the virgin coat you never buy. You get up before the crickets breaking your bread into warm milk. Six days a week 12 hours a day at 6 am reviving old machines making them sing so I can buy $80 shoes; in style, every year. For twenty-five years six days a week 12 hours a day you pull your belt tighter tie your shoes a little slower. At 55, you make a joke over a bottle of wine. “Someday I’ll go back,” you say, remembering the town in Italy where you were born. Both of us
know you will not return. the drive
home A full day loading the rented van affordable from the discount my father earns from work. He’s wearing navy blue: pants, buttoned-shirt, socks reminiscent of 25 years; a job he’ll die in. He’s come close once or twice. Controlling the wheel preparing for roadblocks ahead going at them slow. A womyn beeps, passes leaves him behind. Exit 36B taken in silence a long day for the old man controlling the wheel in
pain, in navy blue. Lace Doilies (Hot-blooded) Rarely could the kids be around when crocheting time came the aunts and grandmothers needed quiet, peace we couldn’t understand, having heard that piece-work ended with the depression; they’d make banner after banner of wide lace you could lay on the dresser, or the arms of chairs, across the top of your lap while you ate cookies and daintily drank espresso from cups that ached to leap from your fingertips, the hot, dark liquid eager to run through the holes in that lace into your
cool little lap below. Lace Doily (On the
Dresser) The long doily across the dresser, wrinkled and disarrayed, sings its pattern of wheat circles and opening blossoms through these mouths, crumpled and seemingly silent— such long, round silence, silenzio ! The silence of our blood when my lace underthings lie beneath the dresser. |
[1]Amusement park ride by the promenade in Salerno that no
longer exists.
[2]Refers to an unnamed mountain in Salerno.
[3]St. Francis, devoted saint to animals.
[4]In hommage to Barbara Smith’s words “But I think we
were raised the same way. To be decent, respectful girls. They taught us to
work. And to rebel” (“Home,” Home Girls:
A Black Feminist Anthology, ed. B. Smith [New York: Kitchen Table/Women of
Color Press, 1983] 64–69).