reads the poster at the end of a grey alleyway of childhood
where the raggedy guineas of Newark
whisper quietly in their dialects on concrete steps
far from blue skies, olive groves or hyacinths.
Bent in a shadow toward the last
shafts of sunlight above tenement roofs,
Grandpa Galileo sadly sips homemade wine
hums moaning with his broken mandolin.
Children play hide-and-seek
in dusty evening streets as red sauce simmers,
proverbially, hour after hour, on coal stoves,
garlic, oil, crushed tomatoes blended
with precious pinches of salt and basilico-
a pot that must last a week of suppers.
The fathers' hands are ugly with blackened finger nails,
worn rough with iron wrought, bricks laid, ditches dug, glass etched.
Wilted women in black cotton dresses wait in quickening dark,
calling their listless children to scrubbed  linoleum kitchens.
In cold water flats with tin tables, stale bread is ladled with sauce,
then baked to revive edibility. Clothes soak in kitchen laundry-tubs,
washboards afloat. Strains of opera caught in static are interrupted 
by war bulletins.
The poster pasted on the fence at the end of the block
streaked with setting sun and rain reads:
"Don't speak the language of the enemy!"
But, the raggedy guineas can speak no other,
and so they murmur in their rooms in the secret dark frightened
of the *government camps where people like them
have been imprisoned in the New World.
They teach English to their children by daylight,
whispering of Mussolini's stupidity--
stifling the mother tongue, wounding the father's pride,
telling each other, "We are Americans. God bless America!"
_____________________________________________________
FOOTNOTE by the poet: *It's a little remembered fact that there were 
concentration camps for Italian immigrants
here in the United States  during World War II, similar to those in 
which Japanese immigrants
were incarcerated.
_______________________________________________________
Copyrighted (C) 1999, Daniela Gioseffi, from her book of poems 
SYMBIOSIS, 2000. All rights reserved.
=========================================================
Exhibition: When America's Italians Were America's Enemies
(At the Italian American Museum in Manhattan Through February 2003)

"PRISONERS IN OUR OWN HOME"

The Italian American Experience as America's Enemy Aliens

An exhibition about the fear, uncertainty and suffering of Italian resident
aliens designated by the United States government as "enemy aliens" during
World War II.  This exhibition focuses on the East Coast and examines the
contemporary impact of those restrictions.

This exhibition runs through February 2003 at the:

Italian American Museum
in transitional residence at the
John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College/CUNY
28 West 44th Street, 17th Floor, New York, New York
(212) 642-2020
info@ItalianAmericanMuseum.org
www.ItalianAmericanMuseum.org