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“I’m With Stinky,”

 

the tee-shirt read.

My mother was appalled.

“Why would one put

such a thing upon a child?”

 

I was older than a child when

an impromptu palm reader

told me my intuition

line did not exist.

 

Intuition / indecision – Always was

good at the latter, bad at the former.

 

In these [fill in your own hyperbolic

adjective] times, when the family

of the familiar is estranged,

I’m cultivating a new companion –

Instinct.

 

I call her “Stinky.”

I ask, “What say you, Stinky?

Shall we, or no?”

She nods, shakes or nudges.

I’m with her.

stinky 300px.jpg

Land of My Father's War

Adopted, Relinquished Country

 

I was a child

taken to the Old World,

to a country my father

met in war. Loved and left.

Occupied again.

 

Country aflutter with gestures,

fluted with vowels.

One of medieval pageants,

bronze horses, colored glass,

Rooftop theater,

cheesecloth robes,

Pinocchio masks.

Our Italian primer:

Oggi. Today.

 

Place a child might thrive.

 

We returned to our native land and

I left the bosom of the family

for the straight edge of first grade.

 

Desks in rows and Dick & Jane.

Foreigner, a classmate hissed.

 

Dad tried to keep

old words afloat. Piccolina,

poverina

 

We don’t need that here, I replied.

 

Oggi, the lost language soothes

and rankles. I find tomorrow,

domani, in cognates. But

what of yesterday?

Ah, ieri, all ephemera,

ieri.

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