The freshly vacuumed carpet, a lush
white lawn, deserves to be perfect,
and I’ve got two knees and a pair of nail
scissors to trim it. On all fours, I say grace
with one ear to the floor. A door slams
somewhere and I think I hear birds fall from a nest
much too fragile. I would have made it gold
like the other things no one is allowed to touch:
my Nonna’s ring, her heavy rosary, the fancy
praying hands on my mantle. A chirping outside
stirs me to my feet as in childhood when Nonna
Concetta would whistle and I’d race up the street
to see what good things she had
created, trampling her wild grass,
the tomato—and grapevines grasping at my feet,
sauce and wine for the whole neighborhood.
Nonna’s lonesome old neighbor was the poorest
of us Sicilians, made supper when it fell
from the telephone wires. Once she pulled me
into her dark-smelling kitchen as I flew by.
From the abyss of her cauldron she lifted
a steaming wing. Pigeon, she plied,
but I knew better than to eat
the holy dove as the grey bird wept
from her wooden ladle, soiling
the once white floor.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 28, Issue 1.
Lake Angela is poet laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She is currently composing her Autobiography of My Grandmothers, and her books include Scivias Choreomaniae (Spuyten Duyvil), Words for the Dead (FutureCycle), and Organblooms (FutureCycle). Her poems also appear in The Common, Bayou, Seneca Review, Passages North, ANMLY, and others, and her poetry-dance translations present the value of schizophrenia spectrum creativity: www.lakeangeladance.com.
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