Cry Baby

Under the ghost of a moon,
I ask my teacher a question,
“Stop whining. Go sit down.”
My face is hot. I want to cry but don’t.
I was only complaining about
my drawing. I sit on the stool
and sink into the school version of myself.
“Crybaby,” my mother calls me,
saying in Italian worse, “Piscia occhio,”
Peeing from your eye;
she would laugh at me and still I would cry,
her small feet pointing out like two swollen little soldiers,
my river surrounding her but never drowning her.

When my mother cries, I sit very still and watch,
I do not call her names and hope that she continues to breathe,
the house feels very small and it is pressing down on me,
she tells me she was not allowed to cry in front of her mother,
she would get a slap and went back to work,
there was always hard work and no time for any of that.

In school I learn to hate war from my teachers,
my father loved Nixon and so did I until I reached high school,
Mr. Verton, a Vietnam vet, cries in class about what the war has done
to him and his friends, we are there in the story when he tells how his friend’s head
explodes, I try not to move in my seat and no one opens their mouth
to call him a fairy for crying, crying like a little girl.
My math teacher stands by the door with a yardstick and hits
every student who does not have the homework, she is not crying.
I would never cry in front of my teachers,
my mouth stays closed at school, afraid to open it to even speak the language.
I wish that everyone would understand what it means to cry.

In college my professor tells me I misread Wordsworth’s poem,
my paper is misguided, mistaken, miserable,
full of errors, do I even know what I am talking about?
Do I even understand the basic laws of grammar or is it gravity?
He does not cry when he tells me all of this, but he looks like he wants to.
I sit and listen, pretend I understand all the scrawling red words,
as if I really do have a place in this world of romanticism, modernism,
and post-modernism, and it is no place for tears.

At my grandmother’s funeral mass, all my uncles are crying,
standing in the front of the altar by the coffin, while the priest speaks in Italian,
Uncle Mike, Uncle Tony, Uncle George, Uncle Dave, and Uncle John,
tears on open faces, no choking back: they are boys again
crying for their mother and no one tells them “that is enough of that.”

I am still falling in that closet where I hurt myself and
I am crying and I am still choking on that piece of ice and
my mother is there, shoving her fingers down my throat
to save my life or yelling at me, “Ma che so c’è se?”
and she hears me crying
and it all starts again.