Two Weeks Before Christmas
We, like rats scurrying after a flood,
take a field-trip from Brooklyn to Stowe, VT
the car tracing roads that open as a kaleidoscope might
onto fire moons, freezing point breezes, barren birches
and you comment out loud that this lady
whose house we are staying at,
her husband, must be her captive,
the way he serves us bacon earnestly
and then introduces us to the tea cup pigs
he saved from the Internet, now robust
and intelligent in the barn or that you can’t
believe that I thought you might really like
a tour of the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory
as if anyone would like something like that,
recoiled still that also the miniature horses
are rescues, on their way to the glue factory
before becoming the punch line of our Airbnb host,
before we skid down icy roads to a foodie spot
that reminds us of home and drink top shelf
whiskey and watch the only other black person,
in maybe the whole state, a woman, smile at you
from across the bar, a smile like the one from
the other woman whose car we hit near
the gas station that morning, charmed out
of any recompense quite easily since all girls
love you, like I do, when you tell me, as our tires
turn in the ice, the tow company not arriving,
Laura get out of the car, stop crying, and hug me,
saying doesn’t this feel like a snow globe,
and I almost forget we are not sleeping
together anymore, two children
in separate twin beds in a farm house,
six hours from the city, from the night
you asked who the fuck I thought I was
slamming doors in your house
and then slept on the couch.
Bio:
Laura Marie Marciano is the author of Mall Brat (CCM, 2016). She is an educator, media artist, and curator, and has performed and read at places such as Poet’s House, Brooklyn Museum, and MoMA PS1. Laura is 1/2 first generation; 1/2 third generation Italian. Her Nonna lives in Genoa most of the year. Laura has traveled and lived in Italy; her heart city is Firenze. She does not speak Italian, at least not in the ways one would expect.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 