The downside of choosing a Frank Sinatra song to play at a funeral–
Is that you might run into it now and again, over your bolognese,
At an Italian restaurant. And the waiter will pretend not to notice
When you wipe your eyes with a checkered napkin and take big
Regulating breaths between sips of Montepulciano.
The other side of choosing a Frank Sinatra song to play at your Nonno’s funeral–
Is that he might find you again, once in a while, at an Italian restaurant
He’s never been to, or on New Year’s Eve in a hotel room in Miami
Watching thousands of tiny people under confetti and snow in New York City.
And every, single, time, the clock will stop for four minutes and thirty-five seconds.
Portals
In a room of open-eyes,
Wide-cut hearts and young
Women, with covered, fresh memories
Of blue, purpled, tender slices
Into our skin, our men point to
Their own–from motorcycles, sports,
Farm animals–healed, smoothed,
Stamped neatly on their faces.
My grandmother was keeper of the family history–
She carried a tin box of photographs, daguerreotypes and worn
Christmas cards from her home–where she lived sandwiched
Between generations–to ours, where we spread them out
On the kitchen table and scrawled pencil notes on the back. She
Was an only child, the only one left to carrying the glittering
Burden. Four pounds or four lifetimes in her palm. I remember
My own palm as a child in her home, smooth and steady over the
Wood panels where there was a knot; a splotch that sometimes
Looked like a dog from the corner of your eye. And how I felt our
Upstairs room was visited by a spirit decades before I learned of
Leona. My grandmother was keeper of family secrets, that she stitched
Into the embroidery of hundreds of clothes. That she held in her mind alone
For decades after my grandfather left this plane. Of Uncle Abe who
Lived with his family in a cornfield. Eight kids and an organ their mother played.
She remembered scooping ashes from the fire in tiny dump trucks there. My
Grandmother was keeper of glimpses–of walking along the canal with her
Grandmother picking milkweed for a sauce, of sitting on the lawn in her
Sundress eating fresh raspberries from her father’s garden. At four-feet tall,
I thought she was bold and brave living alone with her thoughts. But the brave
Came instead, years later, in a Facebook message to me, trying to get in touch
With my mom. She was the only one left with all those memories. My mom,
Picked her up and made a nest for her in my childhood bedroom with all
The glittering, the tin box, the dump truck, sandwiched right there.
Rachel Vinciguerra (she/her) lives fifteen minutes from the nearest river in Pittsburgh with her husband, cat, and chickens. She is a poetry and prose writer and young adult cancer survivor. Her poetry can be found in Rising Phoenix Review, Emerge Literary Journal’s scissors and spackle publication, Eunoia Review, and others.