The Ruby Throated Hummingbirds Are Gone
By Daniela Gioseffi
They've flown south now
and one Great Egret fishes the pond
as broad-winged hawks begin their migrations,
kenneling on thermal currents of wind
off above yellowing mountains.
Now, snakeweed blooms along the trail choking
white and purple asters. A few bleeding
leaves fall amidst wilting greenery. Poison
Ivy turns red with warning.
My eighty-three-year-old mother still argues
with my father, twelve years dead. Their hatred
reverberates in a back room
of my head, rattling memories of my lonely childhood.
Their loathing for each other
colors all my days with pain. I loved him
because he loved me best, but I look like her,
my face and spirit tear at each other.
Am I the child of hate?
A wounded love sprouts like a weed
from watery depths, uncultivated,
flowers, white and purple, bloom,
even in these days of dying leaves.
Beyond winter,
no one grieves.
Some Slippery Afternoon
By Daniela Gioseffi
A silver watch you've worn for years
is suddenly gone, leaving a pale
white stripe blazing on your wrist.
A calendar, marked with appointments
you’ve meant to keep, disappears, leaving
a faded spot on the wall where it hung.
You search the house, yard, trash cans
for weeks, but never find it.
One night the glass in your windows
vanishes,
leaving you sitting in a gust of wind.
You think how a leg is suddenly lost
beneath a subway train, or taxi’s wheel,
some slippery afternoon.
The child you've raised for years,
combing each lock, tailoring each smile,
each tear, each valuable thought,
suddenly changes to a harlequin,
joins the circus passing in the street,
never to be seen again.
One morning you wash your face,
look into the mirror, find the water
has eroded your features, worn them
smooth as a rock in a brook.
A blank oval peers back at you,
too mouthless to cry out.
Through the “I” of the Needle
By Daniela Gioseffi
The peach is
a belly dancer's fruit.
It has a navel eye for seeing
the world through the skin,
rounded buttocks good
to place against the hand
the way earth reminds flesh
of its being.
Through the eye of the needle,
death is a country
where people wonder
and worry
what it's like to live.
The sullen wish to live
and live soon
to be done with death
and the happy want to stay dead
forever
wondering will it hurt to live
and is there death
after death?
Beyond the East Gate
Daniela Gioseffi
I listen to the voice of the cricket,
loud in the quiet night,
warning me
not to mistake a hill for a mountain.
I need to be alone,
in a private house with doors that open only outward,
safe from strangers who smell of death,
where I can draft a universe under my eyelids
and let nothing invade it.
I want to sing a fugue
sounding like the genius of flowers
talking to leaves on their stems,
to have more concrete meaning
than even the dance of a child in my uterus.
I'm a lost and primitive priestess
wandering in a walled city of the wrong century.
I need to spend thirty years in the desert
before I will understand the sun,
thirty years at sea
to gather the blessing of salt and water.
In the back room of my skull
a secret dice game determines
the rites of my hands
before they touch flesh again.
I want to reach a peace I've never known,
to be an old woman who is very young,
a child who is a sage
come down from the mountain.
Some Slippery Afternoon
A silver watch you've worn for years
is suddenly gone
leaving a pale white stripe
blazing on your wrist.
A calendar marked with all
the appointments you meant to keep
disappears
leaving a faded spot on the wall
where it hung.
You search the house, yard, trash cans
for weeks
but never find it.
One night the glass in your windows
vanishes
leaving you sitting in a gust of wind.
You think how a leg is suddenly lost
beneath a subway train
or a taxi wheel
some slippery afternoon.
The child you've raised for years,
combing each lock,
tailoring each smile, each tear,
each valuable thought,
suddenly changes to a harlequin,
joins the circus passing in the street,
never to be seen again.
One morning you wash your face,
look into the mirror,
find the water has eroded your features,
worn them smooth as a rock in a brook.
A blank oval peers back at you
too mouthless to cry out.
