SHARK REEF
A Publication of the Lopez Writers Guild
Vol. 2, No. 2
June 2002

 

Poetry

by Liza Franzoni

From L'Italia to La Merica

for my great grandmother, Louisa Belfi

 

From your mountain village
you looked this way
in a dream that filled
your whole belly
with food and children.
In La Merica, you played the mother
to the hilt a relative said
you weren't a good wife.
Angry and harsh, mama mia,
Yet you never complained.
Always the children, your children
defined your life,
were what mattered
and their strange survival
in this sharp dream land.

I am your unfamiliar descendant.
I am estranged, lost
in another La Merica.
The role I play is this:
the unmarried mother
who brings shame upon the family name. Yet still,
I am a mother like you
and teach my child,
like your children
an awkward tongue,
after four generations
still inadequate.

I speak in English to my child,
translate television, video games,
complex politics, "virtual reality."
This language of unripe leavings,
of false comings and goings
has no words for kitchen walls
that absorb the sound of laughter
and the smells of many feasts.

In the weedy garden
I dig dandelion root for tea.
Puffballs spread seed
and young leaves make a good salad.
I'm attuned to other voices,
ones you heard in silent Piemontesi;
hummingbirds and buds,
quince and arugula
and crows,
who are here and there
in the tops of tall trees.
Gathering together,
the shiny blue-black birds speak
in loud conversational caws
and from their vantage point
discern the ancient patterns
of human movements
few people ever translate.
Our family flocks like crows
around the kitchen table,
still speaks in warm tongues
at the central hearth.

I think of you, great grandmother
as I stir the pot of polenta
and burn it just right.
Your harsh struggle is familiar,
one whose language I've learned.
The battles are habitual now.
Your stubbornness I've inherited
for a different war -- the same war.

We hear each other's piercing tones
echo across generations
for our children's survival.
For us,
marriage is secondary
in our lovely burning hearts.

 

---

The Little Angel

 

Great grandfather Angelo dreamed
of America, the beautiful land
where Count Bettoni
could not tell him "faster!"
in the villa gardens
where among the plants
Angelo sweated
day after day.
One day, Angelo had enough,
told his boss to go to hell.
He had to leave his magical town
where year 'round the streets
were filled with the scent of flowers.
His dreams could be held no longer
safely submerged in the depths
of Lago Di Garda, but had to rise
as lakes do every spring
to purge themselves. He hiked
over the Alps to Switzerland,
then America, the land of the free.

The boat landed in the Battery
during the Blizzard of '88.
Angelo's first impression
of the magic land of his dreams
was the horse shit and slush
all the people had to wade through
to get off the boat.
Angelo was not impressed.
He found out this America
was not what he dreamed
as day after day
he dug ditches with other Italian men
who cursed under their breath
the padrone who yelled "faster!".

In the Dellawanna section of Clifton
he was known as "Angelino Bresciagne
sonnez la guitar"
and when he wasn't working,
he made wine and music
for the benefit
of everyone.

Little Angel from Brescia playing the guitar.
His dreams never died, were passed on --
my grandfather organized men against big business.
Bosses sent their thugs, beat him bloody,
tried to drain Angelo's dreams from his bones.
But it didn't work, the dreams
live on in the stories, in us
who haven't forgot how to dream,
how to work with our hands
to create our lives beautifully --
our survival against the weight
of ugliness
all around us.

As for this America. A melting pot?
More like a soup left unattended
where all the scum
rises to the top.
And it's up to us dreamers
to do some skimming
and give it a good stir,
because the pot's boiling over
and the good stuff on the bottom
is starting to scorch.
And always remember
when cooking
to do it with love
and in case you forget
listen for the Little Angel,
the Little Angel playing the guitar.

 

---

Double Wedding Ring

 

Grandmother,
what secrets did you whisper
to your quilting friends
in hushed tones, lest the menfolk hear?
Did you tell them that your husband beat you?
And let your children starve as he ate his fill?
Or did they know already, and sit neatly stitching
the talk around aches, acknowledged barely with a nod,
a glance, or a quick light touch.
Was this tight stitch I'm touching
with my finger small like yours,
one of buried half-truths
or did you share the pain that seeps
through cracks in the heart
and like coal dust, settles over everything.
And when you were done did your breath
ruffle the scalloped edges of the quilt
and fall away into air?
Did you listen to womenfolk tell their stories
one by one, again and again
of too many children and not enough food?

I ask because I need to know.
I need to know that women have always shared,
stitch by stitch, patch by patch,
saving scraps, patient, slowly sewing
this double wedding ring quilt, so often
an intricate patchwork of cruel marriages
sewn together in linked rings. And know
we remember ourselves and each other,
sharing our power to create beautiful things,
an unbroken inheritance of granddaughters.

 

©2002 Liza Franzoni

Liza Franzoni, 37, lives with the Salish Sea, eats seaweed, and makes medicine from land plants. She recently opened a used bookstore on Lopez Island. Her son, Miles, is 16 and her daughter, Alaria, is 3.

 

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