In Answer to Their Questions
Italian is where I'm understood, loved, and included, where aglio e olio is Neapolitan for soul food. Italian means my living habits are not quirks but ceremonies, mostly invisible to the non-Italian eye. My skin color is olive, not "white" and the hair spreading down my arms and legs and over the top of my lip is a dense garden cultivated for centuries by Neapolitan peasants digging, dropping their sweat into the soil like seeds, passing down their genes breaking their backs to subsist resisting their own extinction down there nel mezzogiorno, the land of the forgotten, they clung like cockroaches to life. My skin color is olive, like theirs, and the hair spreading down my arms and legs and over the top of my lip grows thicker the more black pepper I shake over my spaghetti. Italian means the boat from the boot-shaped country The immigrants teeming like lentil beans in New York Harbor exhausted and sick, crammed in thick below the deck shoved into steerage like cattle They made a three week passage over icy water, watched their dead family members heaved overboard by authorities who altered passenger lists removing Italian lives like lint from old clothing. Italian meant whole families herded in line for a doctor's exam, and someone singled out as defective sent back, Italian in fact were the syllables and vowels of our long and beautiful family names lopped off on Ellis Island, our bloodlines stopped like zucchini chopped in a Cuisinart, the original American Express. Because Italian meant a country divided, the Northerner's boot in Sicily's ass the Neapolitan shit on a country torn, and half living in miserable squalor in the South. Italian meant my Neapolitan grandparents losing family one by one to hunger and disease forced to leave one by one, eldest sons first in line for a boat that would deliver them to a land where the streets are paved with silver and gold. Italian meant my grandfathers Dominic and Donato supporting their wives and children by sweeping the streets of New York the custodians, but never the beneficiaries of that wealth. But Italian meant you do what you must to survive You keep your mouth shut Celebrate what you got and be thankful you're alive. It meant one generation later five kids draped on couch and chairs T.V. blares, Sinatra sings while the phone rings and my mother finally flings her hands in the air invoking the Goddess "Madonna! Give me one hour of peace. One hour!" |
Italian American meant whole neighborhoods laid out like a village in Naples: Ambrosio, Iovino, Capone, Barone, Nardone, Cerbone, Luisi, Marconi, Mastrianni, Bonavitacola, and we 'Mericani' living right beside "those ginzos straight off the boat." Italian meant Sunday morning sausage and meatballs foaming in oil, a pot of pasta water set to boil and the hollow tap of a wooden spoon or Mrs. Nardone chasing us with the broom her tomato plants flattened by the kids next door We mimicked her English with up-your-ass gestures that crossed an ocean to roost on our hands, olive-skinned Americans who didn't know what the hell we were saying or to whom. Italian meant the old men playing bocce ball in Hartley Park, Mr. Bonavitacola roasting peppers in his backyard, and every nose in the neighborhood inhaling the aroma. Italian was the horn honk of Ambrosio's red convertible, parading up and down the street on Saturday afternoon his comings and goings announced with a musical toot that never would suit his more Americanized Italian neighbors. Italian was the sound of my cousin Anthony's accordion as he practiced upstairs squeezing the air into deep hums and festival sounds, the accordion strapped to his back the sun glinting off chrome and black keys, a taste of Festa di San Antonio all year long. Italian meant the yellow patties of polenta frying in a pan, a pot full of escarole greens and Ma spreading the lentil beans on the kitchen table, talking to me after a day at school sorting the good from the bad, the good from the bad at the kitchen table. Or my sister Lisa sitting the kids down, pouring salt crystals onto a plate on the kitchen table telling us: "Here's the white people," & pouring pepper over them, "And here's the black people," & pouring olive oil over them, "And here come the Italians!" and us squealing with laughter as the oil bubbles slithered and slid over the salt and pepper, retaining their distinct and voluptuous identity. But Italian also means those garlic breath bastards dirty dago wops with greasy skin Ginzos straight off the boat Slick-haired, like vermin they bring disease Italian means the entire Mafia looking over my shoulder whenever I cash a check. "Capone? She's from Chicago!" and their laughter because they associate my Italianness first and foremost with a criminal and hardened killer. But, second generation Italian American means I do what I must to survive, means I won't keep my mouth shut, won't shrink to fit someone else's definition of our lives. Italian American means my living habits are cultural ceremonies, not quirks. My skin color is olive And the hair spreading down my arms and legs and over the top of my lip grows thicker and thicker the more I resist, the more I insist on possessing entirely who I am. © 1989 –1990 First published in Unsettling America: A Multicultural Poetry Anthology, edited by Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan, c. Viking Penguin, c. 1994, and also Sinister Wisdom, a quarterly journal, c. 1990. |
In My Neighborhood
The smell of roasting peppers was often floating in the air as Mr. Bonavitacola sizzled them over an outdoor flame, the sweet aroma drifting to every nose. You would often hear the loud buzz of an electric saw as the Nardone's next door knocked down a wall With hammer and nails they'd sheet rock a second bedroom extending their front porch to accommodate their bursting family. In my neighborhood people re-built their homes from scratch Old toilets sat on sidewalks Tomato plants sprang up on the slivers of land between sidewalk and street The neighbors were at it again. We thought of them as ginzos, right off the boat They came from Italy as we did, only more recently. They moved in next door and next door and next door till one by one, all down the block the dagos flocked and our neighborhood became a Little Italy, of sorts They moved in next door, leaving their families an ocean behind They'd fix up dumpy houses working their asses off the whole family sawing hammering building till they made it halfway good Home sweet home |
They sent their kids to American schools I bambini non parlavano italiano. Only at home, would they eat Italian food and speak Italian words. Le parole italiane esistevano solo a casa. The Italians in our neighborhood kept a distance from the Americans and their strange ways their broken families, disrespectful kids, and politicians full of lies They could never quite trust questo mondo dei americani where nothing is superior to the almighty dollar bill But in America they could find a job, buy a broken down house and make it home. They could squeak out a way to live Yet decades later, if you ever asked them, they'd still say "La mia famiglia e di Napoli, Sicilia, Calabria, Avellino." They'd still say "Io sono italiano." * The children did not speak Italian. * Italian words lived only in the home. * this world of the Americans Published in Avanti Popolo: Italian-American Writers Sail Beyond Columbus, edited by the Italian American Political Solidarity Club, c. 2008, Manic D Press, San Francisco, CA |
Ode to an iPodThe motor spins while I listen to thin wooden sticks tapping hollow logs and flutes gliding softly over green palm leaves I walk in a calm forest not unknown to thunder, traveling the lowlands of Kenya Suddenly a bird chirps alone and is echoed by a whole flock singing up the sun singing it over the hill singing so shrill while palm fronded animals begin to creep in the shadows and the day starts bright and warm. Temperatures peak and bees swarm in the moist jungle air. I lose my bearings swearing I’m in the lowlands of Kenya leafy, shadowy, dense wondering if I’m chirping bird gliding snake or spotted cheetah sprinting through the yawning trees. Published in 100 Parades, the California Poets in the Schools Statewide Poetry Anthology c. 2000. |