Feile-Festa - Spring 2006

FEILE-FESTA
Spring 2006

Prose

No Matter How Far
- L. Dolan
Ireland and Sicily: Two Islands
- E. Farinella
Southern Exposure
- M. Lisella
Because She Was
- J. O’Loughlin
Flying
- P. Schoenwaldt
Review of DANCES WITH LUIGI
- T. Zeppetella

FEATURED ARTIST
Melissa Kennedy

BIOGRAPHIES

Contributors

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

THE PAST

The past is a photo album, a collection of still photographs
pasted on black pages, little silver triangles to hold
the pictures in, only these pictures are ones I never took,
pictures of us under Zia Rosa's grape arbor, the grown ups
sitting around a large oilcloth-covered table, the women
at one end, talking, and the men playing briscole ,
wine in short glasses before them,
peaches gleaming in the red wine.
We watched from the fringes of the group,
the men serious, cigarette smoke rising above
their heads, and the women at the other end
of the table, whispering together about the other Riverside
families, their voices soft and happy in the summer air.

The light bulbs strung from the arbor buzzed with insects,
and we children, listened to the stories our mother's told
to one another, understanding only that they didn't realize
how much we heard. Those evenings, the air heavy
with the perfume of the huge clusters of purple grapes
that grew from the vine, the aroma of corn and tomatoes
from the garden, the contained world of the grape arbor where everyone
we loved was together and safe, and today, across the distance
of forty years, I would go back, take a photograph
of those evenings, my father's face jovial, his hooked nose,
his clean clear skin, his love of company and politics,
and my shy mother, still young, sexy even in her black
mourning dress, her hair shining under the light
of that dangling bulb, her reserve broken by the company of other women and the stories
they told, and my brother, sister, and I listening
to their voices and drinking cream soda.

I would capture these moments if I could,
my mother, father, Zio Gianni, Zia Rosa,
Zio Guilliermo, Zia Louisa, all dead now,
and the only thing remaining to pass on to my children
is this memory that when I, too, die,
will have vanished forever, as the world I grew
up in has already vanished and not even
a photograph to show what once was.