my niñera Carmen,
her lips against
my baby cheek, the
smell of choclos and
the salty taste of
her fingers as she
surreptitiously slipped
each kernel in my still
toothless mouth
Today, my mother will say,
“Carmen loved you. She would
scoop you up and run, hide
you when I was after you,
when you were in trouble.”
I haven’t the heart to
take apart her story.
in Quito 1965, good women
wore black hats and worked
the fields in long skirts
while lady expats hobbled,
their high Italian heels
wearing unevenly
over cobblestone streets,
through open markets,
fine sheen of sweat
beading above
cherry lipstick,
manicured hands, so soft,
brandishing their aggressive American dollars
Northern Italy, 1966,
the first day of Asilo,
my reckless lips, and
my angry teeth bit
the proffered hand of
Suor Vicenza
she tasted of soap
and raw carrots
three pale blue, plastic cars,
bagged together like cookies,
swinging gently at my side,
took flight in an angry arc
down marble stairs
descending to the
darkness of the convent
rather than wait for
her slap on my face,
I held her bitten hand
in both of mine, lips
trembling, grazing skin,
my shallow breaths
ever hopeful of
true tender mercies
in Italian, the words
for nursery school,
kindergarten, and asylum,
are the same: Asilo
I dared not turn to look,
instead listening to the
steel horseshoe sound
of my mother’s heels
walking away
my teacher knelt quickly,
a genuflect reflex,
black cloth flowed
around her face,
over her shoulders,
where her hair
should have been
I held fast to
her bitten hand,
as the free one
gently stroked
my cheekbones,
one of them bruised
———————————–
This poem is my entry for this week’s dVerse Poets Pub challenge to write a poem describing a sensory memory.
Read about it, and link to the other entries here:
February 9th, 2013 at 12:00 am
There is such a intense relationship between a child and her nanny…my cousin had one that was so much closer than her parents who were busy working. Such a story woven in to this poem.
February 9th, 2013 at 10:49 am
Your poetry is so exquisite. I always know, when you post something, that it’s going to hit me somewhere really deep. Truly a master of your art. And I adore this “a genuflect reflex”.
February 9th, 2013 at 10:51 am
the steel horse sound of your mothers heals…very concrete sound…the holding the bitten hand as well…oy on the bruised cheek bone as well…really nice story telling in this…
February 9th, 2013 at 12:41 pm
I am taken with the way in which you tell this…staccato kind of with wistfulness..Ecuador and Italy…the word ‘asilo’ .surrogate mother…had to have been rough at times…