after nonna lost her memory
we used to laugh
at how she only noticed every tree
we drove by. Look at that one!
Oh, what a nice one! We said:
Maybe that’s what getting older means.
You forget the familiar landmarks
and remember all the trees.
We meant it sort of sadly, wanting
her to marvel at the new porch
on her old house, the diner car
that now sells CBD, the farm store
wondering if this town cares
enough to pay for fiddleheads. Now,
driving to the coast my mom says
remember being here when you were small?
and I say yes, but all I remember
is the sound of their grown-up voices
and the inside of the car, and if I knew
the words to the poems the world wanted
or needed, this is where I would write them
saying across the varied landscapes
of our experiences, here is what is crucial.
Here is what you must hold onto.
But I know every person living
has something different and entirely
true to say. Everything we have been
drawn toward has called out urgently
I am the thing that matters.
my body as venn diagram
I try to write a poem about pregnancy, and end up writing about pleasure, which curls
like an unformed creature in someone else’s gut: maybe alive, maybe something else.
Okay, then, I will write about sex. But I find myself writing about an eating disorder I nurtured
when I was seventeen, an empty satisfaction I thought I’d long ago dismissed.
Frustrated with myself, I try to write about healing. This is what I want my work to do.
Instead, I write, again, about your mom:
not her cancer, but the way she has wanted
(although she does not say so) to live
to meet our child.
prayer to Santa Lucia on the winter solstice
In times like these, I find I am lost
for words. You startle me with
lemons. Pignole cookies. A pair
of eyes on a platter, to search
in the dark. I know your story, sure,
but not the lesson. Maybe you were
a mastermind, a sacrifice? Maybe
you were just trying to get out
alive. In the end, we all
light candles, if not in faith
then in mourning. Still,
you startle me
with this: the night will be
long – stay close.
prayer to Santa Lucia on the spring equinox
You occur to me in springtime, when the sun is a bowl of oil.
No one needs your candles now, with April
close enough to touch.
I search in vain for an image of you in daylight.
It is always Jesus, surrounded by newborn lambs. Tell me:
are there seasons in the heavenly kingdom? Does your body
feel them forming, a container for everything green?
Do you ever wish your world belonged to older gods?
Even Persephone was given the grace of permission
to be more than just one thing.
You can be the queen of hell, if you want to.
You can be the olive, blossom-scented sky.
You can be Jesus and the lambs.
prayer to Santa Lucia in midsummer
Give me the respite of a cathedral in this heat. A hungry man
on the steps, for proximity to faultlessness. Give me ten euros
for one of the tall candles, because people are always dying
somewhere nearby. Give gestures at forgiveness and the wisdom
of the flesh. Faith is one oppression among many. Logic is another
way we starve ourselves. Give me woo woo, give me ritual. Give
my body electric and everything I touch made fragrant smoke.
Give me fifteen minutes with the relics of the child
saint – she looks just like you. Give me the arc of my life
in a vaulted ceiling. A pigeon huddled in the organ pipes
for proximity to sky. Though we deny it, we learned
of beauty here. We can’t resist these offerings like gods to be
consumed. Give pleasure and disgust, give purity
restored. Give me answers that hurt like moving
fingers through flame – cause and effect. The kind
of weight that makes everything lighter. Like water
surrounding stone,
a laying on of hands.
Bio:
Anna Lucia Deloia is a queer, Italian-American writer and educator. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Rattle, Paterson Literary Review, Midway Journal and other outlets. Her debut chapbook, entitled of god and merriment both, is available from Bottlecap Press. Her scholarly work has been featured in peer reviewed journals, and she previously served as an editor for Harvard Educational Review. She can be found at @annaluciadeloia on Instagram.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 