POMEGRANATE
The fruit that binds me to my ancestors
is the ruby-rich, ripe orb I least suspected.
Persephone swallowed its six seeds
on her way out from under, and she, too,
then moved between two worlds with ease,
delighting in the night as much as light.
What peace she found in sliding between both
worlds, unlike her showy mother, obsessed,
bereaved and bereft, nursing such a grudge
as to neglect the earth for half the year, and
even turn her back on harvest! And unlike
her trickster husband, who made her eat the fruit
he knew would make her miss his world.
Could I, like Persephone, glide between two worlds?
Could pomegranate be my symbol, ripe with found belonging?
My feet aching for the pull of ancestral soil, and family roots
holding seas of stories. I want to ride waves of longing,
and emerge from them strong, like Pluto in his chariot.
I want to lift the ruby arils on my fork—pomegranate
crown jewels on our family’s Christmas salad. This fruit
holds big water, like the sea our family crossed. I want
to hold within me all I see: Abruzzo’s soil, its rocky Apennines
known as Italy’s spine. My feet align with the base of the mountain
that bears my family’s name. I’m taken for a tourist all the same,
in this land that flows throughout my ruby heart.
Could I, like Persephone, swallow pomegranate seeds
and return for a season to my American surface world,
where the collective psyche longs for eternal springtime?
Could I learn to delight in daffodils and daisies like
a maiden overjoyed to meet up again with her mother?
Could I live like a pomegranate, plump with polarities?
Could I also live with Abruzzo as terra madre? Could I ripen
in its density, and levity, and grow rich in living old ways anew?
Could the juice of this fruit of the dead bring my own lips alive,
pulp dribbling down my chin, and finding words to live like a
portafortuna, a good luck charm? Could I eat pomegranates
like Persephone, and grow seasoned in moving between two worlds?
Could the pomegranate slake my thirst and make me thirsty
for two worlds? Could it propel me from one to the other, sending
my fingers grasping toward the light in the crack where Pluto’s chariot
split the earth, flinging me out on soil, to live flooded with sun?
BERGAMOT
The magic in her skin lies in its marvels
of stopping and regeneration. It’s in
what hasn’t metastasized, since the rare
and fatal cells with melanoma got excised
four years ago, one sunny afternoon.
It’s in the three-month checks, that first year,
now extended to six—big-time Persephone time!
Each season’s biopsies leave raised, red winter
blossoms on her body, round reminders to have
faith in cells’ regeneration and renewal.
What miracle to marvel at the sun when
its rays lie at their lowest! Like a sundial,
her skin tells time by the sun’s shadows,
yet still renews itself, enough for her to sense
that living with thirst for growth and zest are not
luxuries. She knows to generate, create, water,
and nourish her creations, as her skin turns over
outer layers to replace what’s dead or damaged.
And she remembers to salute what comes alive.
Like bergamot, her body’s winter blooms
become compass points beckoning her true north,
and time becomes her holiest of gifts,
essential and rare, a cross between the signs that say
both “Faith” and “Ciao” on her windowsill.
Have faith in both hello and in goodbye. Six months
of grace to go, before her surface must be scanned
again, her body a divining rod at the dermatologist’s.
Like bergamot, her body’s winter blooms invite
a celebration of this day, in its rare essence,
a dot on each calendar page in her desk diary,
six months of grace in which creations bloom.
Her life is now like bergamot: a hybrid form:
one of reflection, and duality: she lives with knowing
death once rolled across her skin, and hasn’t since.
Just like the prince’s pearl of bergamot, exquisite
citrus fruit, her own cells speak richly, and crown
her queen, with power to choose: joyful refreshment
or growing old at heart, bitter and complaining.
She chooses levity, and winter thriving, leaving
to others the season of sun rays, her cells and
self both stopping and regenerating, the question
of whether to create now delightfully removed.
She wraps her fingers round her pen, and splashes
the skin of her arms across the page, open in joy.
Kirsten Keppel is a 2017 Russo Brothers Italian American Film Forum semifinalist for her documentary Ringraziamenti: The Saint Joseph’s Day Table Tradition. She is a member and past videographer of the Abruzzo and Molise Heritage Society of Washington, DC, and a regular contributor to Ambassador magazine of the National Italian American Foundation. Her poetry has appeared in Mediterranean Odyssey, The Chesapeake Reader, and Lombardi Voices. A descendant of Molisani great-grandparents, Kirsten lives in Washington, DC.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 