Dream about Nonna after Vito died
You were young and honey-haired, cupped us from winds
Though you couldn’t save your own daughters from his throbbing
Hands his stern glances or vile misery how he menaced
Our laughter so we feared even those spontaneities of joy
You cupped us conch-like spiraled together as your eyes
Sought understanding or jaundiced forgiveness
Maybe just subconscious desire to claim this peace to move on
There were many bistro tables arranged in the small dining
Space near the door & a boy carried a small snake which would
Conveniently disappear & re-emerge from under the table
During the graduation ceremony
These cupping embraces were a protection
She thought love alone could protect us from this wrath of the sick
& pockmarked hollow the vituperative
suffering of his inconsequential malehood
She says Tell me about a time when the men were good
She says Tell me my love is enough
Ode to a Fire Hydrant in Bensonhurst
O johnny-pump –
You wear your gushing heart like a sieve
How you adorned us street kids
With relief from the
Volcanic pavement
How you lifted us into
Your arms as though
we were loved.
Self-Portrait as a Series of Paintings we found on Milvia Street
I
Her face made and remade of pastel shapes
One eye whimsical, one eye berates
Lips pursed with holding
Her pieces vary, contradict, pull apart
Under a window
Under a spider
She makes decisions and decrumbs
She pauses before a bedroom door
II
We found your paintings on the street
We hung them on the wall
We hung your expressions
We hung your ghost
We are strangers yet you have lived in our home for two years
How do you do?
Did your children put your art out to pasture?
We wonder and want.
III
Scalene the triptych of your living, of your death
When I gaze back at your conflict, you begin to burn
into phosphenes and I have trouble sleeping
with your eyes gazing, shaped like you have seen too much to bear.
King Kong
Who am I to miss a father
Who wasn’t around very much philandering
& dreaming of being a gangster
Gambling away my sweet sixteen birthday money
My trust fund the mini-townhouse
Where we wore out Rock of Ages & twirled
Our spiral phone cord around
The bend in the carpeted stair.
Who am I to miss a father
Who used belts on us & wrote me songs
Dealt coke to pay the bills
A father we actively referred to as
“Sperm donor” for years who
Pretended to be on the lam & said
He’d make it up
Who am I to miss a father
Who was sometimes tender sometimes honest
Outcast & emotionally bullied in his home life
An un-fillable hole of his own
Scapegoating children into a wild unconscious
Storytelling traumas into a wicked armor
Who am I to miss a father
A faker a baker an insecure embezzler
Who fainted during my birth
Fanned like a maiden in distress
While surgeons cut my mother open
Who am I to miss a father
A feather an eggshell of a dad
A donut baker a dirty bag
Of Pall Malls off the back of a truck
Who am I to miss a father
Whose mischievous eyes gleamed as he lied
Gold chain & track suit, splash of Drakkar from Canal St.
Who am I to miss a father who sat with me
Top row of the King Kong ride screaming to the sky
Melissa Eleftherion is the author of field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & eleven chapbooks from various small presses. Her poems & prose have been widely published in journals including Paperbag, La Vague, & Entropy, & nominated for the Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net. Born & raised in Brooklyn, Melissa now lives in Northern California where she manages the Ukiah Branch Library, curates the LOBA Reading Series, and serves as the Poet Laureate of Ukiah.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 