HOME TEAM
My uncles used to wear suits and ties
with Dick Tracy hats to Yankees games
to show respect, or to show they
could afford suits, could eat hot dogs
to show their fathers they were
grateful for all they had to go through
getting off the boats at Ellis Island
when they called Italians black names
told them to go back
named many of them TONY
because their suitcases were
stamped TO:NY
hit them hard until they
found their way to Little Italy
in dense crowded lower Manhattan
where goods traveled by pushcarts
so mamas could fry garlic in olive oil
from Sicily, slice zucchini, squeeze
meats into sweet sausages, stop only
to sing Ninna Nanna Baby to help young
ones find sleep while onions sizzled in
the always cooking pan of I’ll show you
what we can do
Susan Shea is a retired school psychologist who was raised in New York City, and is now living in a forest in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Since she has returned to writing poetry this year, her poems have been accepted in a few dozen publications, including Across the Margin, Feminine Collective, Ekstasis, Persimmon Tree Literary Magazine, Military Experience and the Arts, and the Avalon Literary Review.