Gabriella M. Belfiglio lives in Brooklyn, NY. She teaches self-defense, conflict resolution, and karate. Her work has been published in many anthologies and journals including The Centrifugal Eye, Folio, Avanti Popolo, Poetic Voices without Borders, The Potomic Review, and Lambda Literary Review.
For more info visit: www.gabriellabelfiglio.info
reborn
I’d be a house cat
live with owners who
let me cuddle amidst
their clean warm laundry
If I emerge again, like Persephone
I’d be a cardinal
reside in a colony
of trees
fly red through the air
Or
I’ll be a piano
dwell in a concert
of students whose fingers
steer me to sing.
If I come back as a fish
I hope my lover is
the turquoise waves
of the Tyrrhenian Sea
If I grow new as a vegetable
I’ll be the spiky petaled
tender-hearted artichoke
In another life
I’ll be a star
bright enough
to be wished upon
light years away
If I were to begin again after death
I would brush
Mt. Etna dust
with my bee wings
in a quest to pollinate
the scattered Saponaia
Achilles’ Heel
My foot evenly
thrusts the treadle
which turns the wheel
right in time.
The triad of body,
mind and spirit
abet this mirage,
try to abridge
the momentum of change,
remain in the sea’s headwaters
only ankle deep.
Meanwhile, the heat lightning’s
diagonal flash cuts the sky
into triangles:
a black deeper than the heavens,
cumulonimbus tumbling,
and a patch of calm blue.
Basin
I tell myself: become a gypsy
wear billowy skirts, string bells
around ankles, weave hair
with deep-colored ribbons—
plum crimson charcoal.
Carry little:
pack a knife
and don’t leave
without books
full and empty
of words.
Follow the Mediterranean Sea—
the shape of your pelvis.
Cover your skin with the scent
of jasmine and keep walking
even if feels like a maze
even if it feels like
you will never escape
moving in circles
round and round
the same shitty path.
Find a ripe
lemon or fig
and let it become
your mouth.
Maybe if you don’t expect to feel
at home at the end of the day
it will hurt less.
Maybe you won’t feel alone
if you look into every set of eyes
like a friend’s.
Poetry in this post: © Gabriella M. Belfiglio
Published with the permission of Gabriella M. Belfiglio