Michelle Reale
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Atavistic

Praise and envy have always existed on a continuum.  I could never figure out the difference between an oppressor and a lover; the boot on the neck or a firm and loving hand on the shoulder is a conundrum I am still unraveling.  I am no longer afraid of monastic tendencies.  Secrets are always a bit shocking to the uninitiated, but can sow seeds that can grow into great revelations that arouse the curious among us. I have been looking my whole life for just the right mentor.  So  praise the exiles for their venerable sacrifices, and acknowledge their intrepid nature.  Do not call them wanderers or nomads. Watch how  initially they  elicit sympathy with their downcast eyes, but later, because the threads of their collective coats refuse to properly unravel, disdain.  They remain aloof because they have to be, but their eyes tell another story. Read the glimmer in them. They crossed boundaries that could only be imagined in the despot’s mind, on heavy and reluctant feet.  They traveled light save for their historical burdens and  ambitious future plans. Sentence us all to death in absentia, but send your emissaries before us, just in case. Replace our dust-laden robes with white ones, with braided cords around our waists in the tradition of the saints we revere. We will read each other’s thoughts in unison and raise our voices like we are participating in a grand opera devoid of an audience. In time let’s all forget the places we came from and unfurl our gritty  tongues to speak a new language , pulling our nostalgia for what was, up from the root.  They call this kinship. A classical tragedy in all of its ancestral manifestations.

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Both Sides Now
 
Closed street market at sunset in Sicily. The cats prowl the littered gutters.   I step over fish Bones, rotten fruit and a wine bottle still plugged with its cork, laying on its side in sorrow as if it had been left at the altar.   The expansiveness of the market is the opposite of niche.  The assault of smells reminds me that I am a body still capable of discernment.  Not one hour ago, merchants manned the tables now folded for another day imploring me to part with my money. When I aim my camera at a veritable pyramid of red tomatoes I am shouted at:  Not for looking, for eating! And though the scene is commonplace to me there are things I am in fear of forgetting. There is an imperative to get the details straight. There are stories I want to tell, and the photographs would provide proof: I was here, I exist.  A man on the corner smokes a cigarette and watches me as I walk down the center of the market like a runway.  Or so I think. He turns from me and blows smoke up to the sky. The nicotine hangs in the humid air, heavy and dank.  I am nothing among the vast amount of things there are to offer.   A group of boys kicks a soccer ball back and forth, as the glow of the sun recedes.  I look for a familiar face to pass the time with, but am left with myself.  The graffiti that covers the walls everywhere contains messages I decode and take to heart. Salvatore ama Mariella is scrawled with abandon in large loopy letters, and I feel something stir.  Loneliness is an empty nave, a friendship in flux, a broken key left in a lock that no longer will open. Further down at the end of the market, I see one apple left in a broken crate, bruised on one side, but shiny and rounded, delicious, and desperately desired on the other.

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My Mother Sings So That My Father Can Sleep
 
In casual conversation // my mother lets it slip //that she sings my father to sleep.// My father looks down //with a smile on his face//then crosses his arms across his chest.// Don’t I ?  my mother asks my father// who smiles and nods.//  My mother cannot sing// though she has done quite a bit of it in her lifetime.//  As a child I remember how she loved to sing //mocking little ditties on every occasion. // It made my face bloom with shame.//  Her transistor radio  moved from the kitchen//  to the bathroom// and down to the cellar //where she did our laundry.  //My father, a light sleeper //and quasi insomniac now listens to her songs// as his head lies on the pillow they sometimes share// beside her, warm under many layers of blankets.// They’ve  walked the road so long together now// it is twilight, and they recede in almost imperceptible ways// to the rest of us //but it all makes sense to them.// Her breath in my father’s ear//my mother sings my father to sleep// and just like that//he closes his eyes.

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Emma Morano Died at 117 Years of Age

Garlanded in her rosary beads and polyester housedress, she kept things simple. This “sculptural simplicity” as her parish priest liked to say, was out of step with the times, both then and now.  In a one-pot kitchen she cooked for herself, and delighted in her solitude crediting longevity to the lack of a husband.  One can relate to Emma in Verbania, Italy.  She would not suffer the indignities that a husband would surely impose, and grieved the loss of a son who she knew she would see, one day, in perfect form.  It was all so long ago. Three raw eggs in a glass and down the gullet every day was a ritual.  A collector of clocks, quiet passer of time, tick, tick, tick. Visitors always stayed too long. She would pull the red and blue stripe knitted vest over her head to keep away the chill.  A resignation undefined would pass through her body, like a beckoning.  Touch the blind. Caress the cheek of a baby. Everybody wants to know the secret.  Ah, the price of fame.  Show us how to live, how to bow our heads first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. People pray to her as though she were a saint. Emma, what can we say, but that we are all so enormously grateful.
 
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Michelle Reale is the author of several poetry and flash collections, including Season of Subtraction (Bordighera Press, 2019) and Blood Memory (Idea Press), and In the Year of Hurricane Agnes (Alien Buddha Press).  She is the Founding and Managing Editor for both OVUNQUE SIAMO: New Italian-American Writing and The Red Fern Review. She teaches poetry in the MFA program at Arcadia University.