Tuesday Poem: previously published in the anthology, Paterson: A Poet's City, in 2005

                                                Dialogue, 2011 by Liliana Porter

Paterson, New Jersey: The Girls 

On Cedar and Summer Streets

had names like songs,

like arias in fact,

that rose and fell

in handfuls of confetti

across the sun.

Santa and Rosa,

tucked like a holy picture inside your missal,

Teresa, Angela, Gracia,

church bell glitter falling

like the angels as they sing us into evening,

Sylvia, Stella, Maria

gleaming in moonlight.

Immaculata Concepcione! 

Palmyra! Preciosa!

Like hymns the mother’s voices

rang down the sidewalk

and girls we called Connie and Pam and Sina

dropped the end of the jump rope

and became a soft percussion of steps,

a murmur of acquiescence,

the creak of a screen door.

Christiana who got to watch the nuns eat in the convent

because her mother cooked for them,

Carmella carrying altar lace,

Caterina celestial in her wedding cake Sunday dresses,

Cosmina and Mariana graceful as boats adrift at sea.

All of them except me.

Ei -----leen !

My mother bellowed,

with an emphasis on the “eye”,

her voice at full tilt,

rain-lashed and battered

as the Irish cliffs in a storm,

smoky as their pubs every night of the week.

The street went silent all of a sudden,

As the girls I turned my back on made the sign of the cross,

and I took the longest way home I could.

Tuesday Poem: an earlier version published by The Nerve: Writing Women of 1997 from Virago Press

 
Romare Bearden's "In The Garden"

Sunny in the Cotton Field

looking distant as she bends

to rest the heavy sack on the ground.

Why’s Sunny so dreamy today ?

Her look so far away: probably

back at the house where her baby

cries and nobody’s picking him up.

Sunny’s arms ache, her breasts gone dry

so baby can feed while she’s away.

What is Mama thinking?

Sitting out on the porch, dozing off

when she should be inside.

Sunny Dark Chocolate

Sweet, uh-huh. That’s what she says to herself

when a little white girl on the bus

points her finger, pale as a maggot, at Sunny,

says Look, Mama. Look. 
A lady made of chocolate!

Then the bus goes all 
shamed and silent,

for a heartbeat or two, 

but it’s enough to give

Sunny an ache in her neck, 

from holding her head up

as she lowers herself 

out the back door.

Sunny Tough Hands

from pulling that soft white stuff

out of claws that hold it tight.

Nothing white without a price.

Jim Crow’s told her that, in how many ways?

As soon as she had ears to hear and eyes to see.

Sunny Too Fat

made her brothers laugh,

say her butt quivers

like the skin that holds the river in.

Right, she said.

And if you don’t stop pinching

and brushing past me

I’ll throw myself in there,

and wash away for good!

Ssss, Sunny, come on, 
sit down with me

Mama putting the plates out, 

just two of them,

for biscuits and honey 

and chamomile tea.

Mama always so good at fixing things:

the miserable din of her brothers,

the dogs, the fields receding

in a hum of pleasure,

the two of them drunk like bees.

Sunny Like A Tree

breaks the blue horizon

stuck in the red dirt of this place,

and reaching up to heaven

with pleading limbs.

Well, not really.

She wouldn’t get very far doing that,

what with the bag dragging behind her,

that won’t go filling itself.

But once in a while she looks up

and that big old leafless thing

seems to be on fire as sun sinks into night.

She imagines it calling through God’s thin ether,

telling Him : Look here, Lord.

Is this all you made us for?

When will you put things right?

I just learned that this poem will be set to music, by composer Dale Trumbore! Yay!

Gretel

It was like waking up.
One minute she was doing as she was told,
stoking the fire so Hansel could go into the pot,
the next hearing a tiny voice inside :

Push her into the fire, it said,
Push the mother.
Push her hard as you can
into her own fire
so it will consume her.

Her hands then,
on the witch,
like they had been on the sweets
she’d won them over with,
only pushing away this time,
unlocking the cage of addiction
that held them both.