Orecchiette
Michael Weber
I visited Bari in my early twenties,
because my mother said you should
visit the places of your family’s roots,
but only remember the elderly women
seated outside Arco Alto rolling snakes
out of dough. Masterful cuts—simple
knife, quick flick revealed how to create
tiny ears, or orecchiette, native to Bari,
or my Grandmother Mary.
Today my mother and I visit Mary
in her new home—Greater Binghamton
Psych Ward. We aren’t fooled, we know
nothing’s great about psych wards,
so we bring her Good & Plenty despite
diabetes & old Vogue’s in vain of claims
she forgot how to read. Mary claps,
ah caramella e moda, you know me well,
I prefer this over, sweetie I can’t remember.
It wasn’t always like this.
She didn’t always call me other names.
Most visits now I’m Robert, her eldest,
or like today, Herman, her only love
after my grandfather. Spent entire visits
as other people despite my mother’s censure,
but this might be our last, nurses say, so
she’s adamant I’m me. Mom, It’s Michael,
your grandson. Mary smiles on recognizing
concave earrings dangling from her drooping
lobes. Well, if it’s today, sarò Bellissima!
Bellissima, my mother repeats
before nurses beckon to talk privately
about Mary’s health, stealing memories
from another patient’s vanity, or dried-out
butterflies resting on her windowsill. Mary
lays shrunken, a Vogue masking her face,
flicking pages. She’s surely forgotten
I’m here. I see beyond each cover, golden
orecchiette—no sign of snakes. Coiled
at the edge of her bed, massaging childish
feet in non-stick slippers, I look curiously
about her room—a zoo of the captured
animals in bingo victories, a nightstand
battlefield of candy wrappers, emaciated
magazines that now decorate her walls.
Apart from a certificate hanging above,
Congratulations on turning ninety!
I’d believe I was visiting a child.
We are quiet on our drive home, maybe
it’s all that greatness we just witnessed,
but today, startled by our own ignition,
I begin a provocation for the trip’s duration
until my mother agrees to teach me tradition—
dirtied in flour, scolding, Michael pay attention!
When I’m gone you’ll have to do this yourself.
Distracted by certainty, instead of process—
I watch tiny ears being flung into a deaf pile.
