Remembering What I Saw: A Glosa
i was born with twelve fingers
like my mother and my daughter.
each of us
born wearing strange black gloves
extra baby fingers hanging over the sides of our cribs and dipping into milk.
–“lucy and her girls,” Lucille Clifton
I arrive, an accident
crying day and night,
and of course there are too many eyes
and they are bleeding.
The diapers must go outside,
and I see the war,
but no one wants to look at me,
no one wants to talk to me,
no one wants to count the eyes.
I was born with twelve fingers
like my mother and my daughter.
My grandmother, who has an eye that twitches, gives me the gold necklace,
gives it all to me:
the candles, the rosaries, the oil and water,
and the dead.
My hands start to knit:
one to pray and the other to curse.
each of us born wearing strange black gloves.
When I move to the desert
an invisible tongue appears,
and I use the language to carry
the bones of the living and the dead
to the volcano,
walk on the edge of its mouth,
words create the memory and the vision,
I no longer need to see,
all of the signs were there when I was born,
when I sat up in my crib, looking at the world,
and blinding the ones who cursed me,
extra baby fingers hanging over the sides of our cribs and dipping into milk.
Carmela Delia Lanza’s prose and poetry have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Coming from a working-class, Italian immigrant family, her writing focuses on identity and cultural transmutation. Her first chapbook of poetry, Long Island Girl, was published by Malafemmina Press. Her second chapbook of poetry, So Rough A Messenger, was published by Finishing Line Press. She currently teaches writing and literature at University of New Mexico at Gallup, in Gallup, New Mexico.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 