A couple of poems from Neither Seen nor Heard

Mutt Bitch

It’s not easy being an angry poet
when you come from a culture
whose most profound statement of anger
is silence.
No one knows
what you’re talking about.
No one knows
what your problem is.
No one believes you.
A poem needs a lot of explaining
but refuses to do it itself.
It expects the culture
to back it up.
If I have no culture
I can say nothing;
therefore, if I
say nothing,
I have no culture.

I’m Neapolitan

on my father’s side,
Sicilian on my
mother’s side.
After my mother died,
when I was eight years
old, my mother’s people
slowly faded away.
I grew up
in a Neapolitan family,
always silently
defending Sicilians.
(Sicilians were
my sainted mother.)
If I misbehaved
or did something
stupid, it was because
I’m Sicilian.
I don’t remember
ever doing anything
that got me called
Italian. I grew up
thinking Naples
is in Northern Italy.

Sicilians don’t want

me, either.
The few words
of Italian I know
are all Neapolitan.
I’m not serious
enough. I’m not
oppressed enough. I
haven’t been conquered
enough. I’m not Olive
enough. I may as well
be Italian. Don’t say
Neapolitan–say
Italian. Remember
the Renaissance. Remember
how Italy saved Europe
by inventing art
and science. (Don’t say
Florence.) But my guts—
what do I do with my guts?
 
Non-Italians don’t know
what I’m talking about.
They think I’m weird.
They think the only
difference, if
there is any, between
Italians and Sicilians,
is that, unlike Italians
(who aren’t too bright,
either), Sicilians make pizza
the way morons make
wheels.
 
So much for that problem.
Now, maybe I’ve had
some inconveniences
as an Italian,
but if I changed
my name, dropped
the vowel, the barriers
would fall with it.
I’d have nothing
to lose.
If I ever felt
lonely, I could
go to the supermarket
and fill my cart
with cans of
spaghetti and meatballs
and no one would
suspect a thing.
 
Maybe it’s time to take inventory.
I’m a woman.
I’m a contessa
on my father’s side,
contadina on my
mother’s side.
I’ve got a
high school equivalency diploma
and an associate’s degree
in liberal arts.
I’m a skilled blue collar worker.
I’m a published poet.
I’ve got a Brooklyn accent
with Italian gestures.
I’m a dyke.
I’m a single working mother.
All this stuff doesn’t add up to
just
one
person.

Fuck it.

++++++++++

The Fly

Giovanni de’Medici,

the first of the branch
of the Medici family
that produced Lorenzo
who almost single-handedly
produced the renaissance
in Florence,
advised his descendants—
“Be as inconspicuous as possible.”

This guy sounds like my father.

The first 16 years of my life,
I learned only two Neapolitan phrases—
assiettete
and statte zitte.
I’m standing now and I’m speaking.

Lesbians are not womanly enough,

not Madonna or puttana enough,
to be recognized by the Italian-
American community.
Italians are not Olive enough,
not light or dark enough,
to be recognized by the American
Lesbian community.
I’m standing now and I’m speaking
yet I am neither seen nor heard.

I’m a Sicilian-Italian-American Lesbian,

the scum of the scum of the scum,
forgotten by those who scream
in protest because they are
forgotten,
and I am neither seen nor heard.

Sicilians tell their children—
“A fly doesn’t enter a closed mouth.”
I’m standing now and I’m
telling the Sicilians,
the Italians,
and the Lesbians—
You can’t spit a fly
out of a closed mouth.