The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have Lisa DeVuono serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2024.
Coming to America
I
My grandfather left
half of himself home,
those other parts
still planting
one in a garden
two in a grave
three in grandmother’s womb.
He brought
a mound of dirt with him,
and every place he traveled
he scattered seeds.
II
From the railroad tracks of Utah,
sprang olive trees, twisted testimony
to broken bones. In the textile mills
in Frankford, spewed blood oranges,
hands dyed from lack of air and water.
And in the womb of la Nonna
birthed the legacy of poets:
Ariosto, Alfieri and Dante.
III
I found his wedding ring,
the golden calf
worshipped and melted down.
I wore it secretly
turning it over and over
like my grandmother must have done
to wish him back.
This poem pays homage to the immigrants who came to America to find a better life. Many endured the Depression Era, and then, as in the case of my father, returned to their homeland as American soldiers fighting on their native soil.
The photo shows my paternal grandmother, and my father reflected in the mirror in the corner as a shadow. When he was fighting the war in Italy, he took as chance to visit his mother whom he had not seen since he was fifteen years old. It would be the last time as she passed away not long after the visit.
Having never met my paternal grandfather, I relied on stories, and images to construct a narrative around men leaving their families behind, often never seeing them again. For the “lucky” few, they returned to find mothers deceased, sisters married and with children of their own, and a country in ruins, hoping to rebuild and forge something better than the poverty they were born into.
Since I grew up in the 1960s and had the safety of our nuclear and extended Italian-American family,it was hard to imagine leaving behind all that to forge a new life. And what of the women who were left behind? And what is a marriage when couples are separated for years on end? And what legacy did our ancestors leave behind? What contributions did they make? This poem attempts to capture a snapshot of all that, as well as the longing that everyone feels to return to a home that they only remember but that has changed so much.
This is the story I inherited.
Today there are so many immigrant stories to be written, cultures from all over the world still affected by war and poverty, and environmental changes. I am trying to imagine something different for all our descendants, something where they are settling into some new configurations of home and no one is wishing their loved ones back.
Lisa DeVuono is the 2024 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County. She was one of the founders of It Ain’t Pretty, a women’s writing collective that performed locally. She produced multi-media shows incorporating song, music, poetry, and dance, including Rumi in Song at the Sedgwick Theater; and Whole Heart Home, and Breaking Open Breaking Free, part of the IceHouse Tonight series in Bethlehem.
She led creativity and poetry workshops and has worked with teens in recovery and cancer patients. She wrote a peer-based curriculum Poetry as a Tool for Recovery: An Easy-to-Use Guide in Eight Sessions for facilitators working with persons living with mental health challenges.
In addition to the full-length manuscript This Time Roots, Next Time Wings, her poetry has appeared in the Mad Poets Review, Paterson Literary Review and the anthology Grit Gravity & Grace: New Poems about Medicine and Healthcare. She is the author of the chapbook Poems from the Playground of Risk published by Pudding House Press and was the recipient of an honorable mention in Passaic County Community College’s annual Allen Ginsberg Contest.
Recently retired, she has worked as an administrator, librarian, and lay chaplain.