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POETRY By: Santa Helena Amico,
Gloria L. Collins, Diane diPrima, Maria Theresa Maggi, and TRANSFORMATION A replica of a woman, palms open at her
side The mantel covering her head flowing
across her shoulders and arms
to her feet, As blue as the sky surrounding her
. . . The Madonna Mary . . . Standing at the corner of the Church at
the crossroads, And in the half-open doorway, a priest. His back to the inside—on this day
devoted to the dead— All Souls’ Day. His raiment—silver-white; the hem of his
cassock brushes the tips
of his shoes. Beyond, the darkness of the Church rises through
the silence of the millenniums: whispers, sighs, and
the patter of feet of priestesses around a marble altar Their skirts clinging to their bodies in
soft folds, Their sounds echo in the wavering glow of
candlelight While the priest, in the entranceway,
tugs at the folds of his skirt. TATTOO Her skin is smooth Her stomach plump Beneath his caress. She lies sleeping— Whiskey, Valium. He arranges the needles,
inks and alcohol in
their room above his tattoo parlor. They had argued about it, “No,
not a spider.” “On
your belly,” he says, “no one will see it.” And its form grows, one-and-a-half inches
in length, The underside of a spider Legs and three pairs of spinnerets for
making webs. When she awakes The creature lies on her belly, She reaches for it . . . Yet it lies there, unmoving. She pulls back. Every day the tattoo grows Till it covers her chest and belly. And soon the spider strings its web From one side of the room to the other Attaching it to the pole lamp to the plastic tree. Night. The tattooist comes through the
door And is caught in the web The spider throws out a band of silk then
another, and
another. Then, it moves quickly towards him. Roman
Interlude Fano, Frascati, Ferrandina— the names fall off the tongue in round vowels full like women’s hips. I imagine distant places exotic because I’m not there breathing their daily dust, where a child’s dress or shirt hangs on lines next to railway tracks, row after row of laundry waving like tattered flags. Via Appia Antica— a place for strolls on ancient stones for embraces under heavy moons for the dead to rest in catacombs, sex and bones within moaning distance: in the curving shadows of aqueduct walls a pliant spine arches and falls a bent knee points to heaven. Catacombs Callouses tread these grimy cobblestone strade, grave markers for generations whose bony grins lie subterranean in dirt tenements: an elbow nudges a well-turned hip, one lost patella pokes a judge’s skull, a crushed wine glass once held by a senator’s daughter, dots toe bones like polish, and gold earring loops smile crescent moons under a child’s chin, her doll petrified rags like olive tree roots while even deeper the forum cats sleep their stone sleep, feline-curled never hungry as their warm cousins sing dawn choruses above ground. coming to
know empedokles Mediterranean colors of the houses on
these hills. Gospel w/relentless beat on the radio “Out of these Aphrodite fashioned
unwearying eyes” A couple of millennia seems like a
moment: This song cd be planting rite of black
Sicilians in autumn fields behind a small house the sounds / the colors as if intervening greys & anglo stillness had never entered. Thus Eris & Eros, to each in measure. Thus
we meet. Dear
Far-Away Friend This
letter will try to be short. This letter will try not to tell a long story in
place of momentary insight. It will try to keep itself on one page only, out
of respect for the aesthetic rectangle on print, framed by a white poise,
decorum, the look of the thing. There will be no marginalia, no crossing out.
There will be no detailed account of bridges finally burned, no one mountain
scaled, or family laundry sorted, washed, dried, and aired. It will say only
things like yesterday I heard your voice on the phone after a long time, a
sensation like cream swirling into my morning coffee, crossing the borders of
sensory intake, confusing them, delighting. That it can't be explained, that
some things are a mystery, bright as coals in the beard of a fire. That
within hours I'll be forty, and the roof of my house is covered with white,
and so is the ground, the tips of the trees, the tops of all fences. My yard
is a blank page. I want to go out and walk on it, knowing one day the page
will turn green under my feet. Entering But a city glows in the dark, beats, even one as small as Alcamo in the northwest corner of Sicily, without street lamps, without sidewalks, here in the night where no one can see me or know who I am, something about the way these houses reach up from the streets, about finding history older than grand- parents, something in my Alcamese blood and the six-pack just before I left my apartment, walking where I come from in a place I’ve never been. The American was spotted heading south along via Vittorio Veneto late this evening when she was seen entering a bookstore in viale Europa where it’s reported she bought a magazine. It’s believed she’s already bought several magazines although, according to local residents, her Italian is very limited. And no one has been able to determine why. Zia Marianna says not to go out alone too late, there are drunks roaming the streets. But nobody can warn me. I’m from New York. Nobody can even catch me. I have a nephew, Francesco, two years old. He likes to wait until everybody’s sitting around the table, talking too fast to be talking to him. Then he climbs up on the table, looks around to make sure nobody’s watching him, smiles a bumpy smile, relaxes his whole body, and just lets himself fall forward and at the same time a dozen arms reach up, hands open like hands. |