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| Story ID: | 1593 |
| Written by: | toni giarnese (bio, contact, other stories) |
| Story type: | Poem |
| Writers Conference: | $500 2007 Family Memories Writing Project |
| Location: | New Hartford CT USA |
| Year: | 2007 |
| Person: | Grandmother |
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In 1898 my grandmother: Maria Giovanna Colangelo chases the fat brown hens through dusty blue grass and scrub on the hillsides of Avigliano, peels fresh figs and splits open their pulpy redness with her freckled hands, carries water up steep hills, past tall cypresses, through iron gates to the piazza where Mussolini exercised on Saturday mornings prays to the Madonna as she polishes the altar rail, strokes her father’s hand and whispers in dialect, offers purple berries to her husband and sings lullabies to her children behind the shutters. Until the day she sailed on the Duca D’Aosta to Ellis Island, registered the mole on her left cheek and scratched her mark on the paper. My grandmother: Alien Number1051939. |
