Joan Mazza Verse-Virtual 2017 January

January 2017

I have begun to explore some genealogy and have had my DNA tested. Now that I have dozens of questions to ask my ancestors, only one of them survives. I guess I’ll be writing more creative non-fiction. By reading and writing poetry, I come to terms with my obsessions. www.JoanMazza.com

New Year’s Day 1944

Faded black and white, photographed outside,
on a Bronx street with brick houses. Aunt Sara,
my mother’s sister, has her steady right hand
on Vinnie Barnaba’s shoulder. He’s thirteen,
head tilted, hands in his pockets, no sign
of the respected pathologist he will become,
revered by his parents who never got beyond
high school. Behind him, two Marys— my mother
and Vinnie’s sister, first cousins, in tailored,
dark wool coats they made, fur epaulets,
hats my mother made. My sister, holds
mother’s hand, a toddler at eighteen months,
no sign yet of the lost sister between us,
no plan for my arrival four years later,
when Vinnie and Mary, siblings,
will baptize me while I scream. No sign
that Sara’s hand will start to shake before
I’m born, the year she’s engaged to Guido,
old at twenty-nine, and die of Parkinson’s at fifty.
Colon cancer takes my mother at sixty-nine,
pulmonary fibrosis takes Vinnie at seventy-four.
In this photo, taken by my father before my birth,
before the signs of many unravelings,
I see where I was, where I will be traveling.

[The Stray Branch 2009/06/21. issue #5, spring/summer 2010]

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