Waking Up in Wonderland, Jasper Glen, 2024.

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Three poems

Gabriella M. Belfiglio

Molder

There are many ways my heart’s been crushed.
In fact, I can no longer cry.
My mother asks: “How do I know you again?”
 
When I reply, I try to remain Zen,
even though every atom of me asks why
are there so many ways my heart’s been beaten?
 
A club I’d rather not be chosen
for.  Still grief hits me like a bulls-eye.
Mother asks: “How do I know you again?”
 
The first time she didn’t recognize me, when
I was still in denial and could lie
about the many ways my heart’s been shattered,
 
it was easy to be deterred by the tender song of the wren
who visits my back window framed with blue sky.
Then, my mother asks: “How do I know you again,”
 
over the phone one day and I pick up my pen
to depict the pieces of her brain that have gone awry.
Each one adding to the chronic wounds inside my heart.
And ask my mother: “How do I know you again?”

​

Count to Ten

I’ve always wanted
to be a lefty.
That atypical thrill.
 
Better yet--
ambidextrous,
to have it all.
 
Who’s satisfied with singularity?
I embrace a buzz
cut close to the scalp
 
and a pinup smear of ruby lips.
Wear mini skirts without
shaving my dark hairy legs. 
 
I’m keen to hear
the curves of a story.
 
My left hand effortlessly
pets my four cats,
 
shakes salt into a pot
of boiling water,
lands a palm-heel
 
strike into the center
of a red leather karate target.
 
Both hands lift
(with intent to console)
a cranky baby
 
too many times
to count.  Even when
I resist the urge
 
to slapthrowshake.
 
My left ring
finger has an indent
when I remove the
 
band gifted from my wife.



Visit to Alaska

Underneath this frame
of mountains, my company
a field of purple
flowers climbing toward
the highest peak.
 
Everything is dwarfed
beneath these towering mounts.
Each limpid breath
I’m reminded how fragile
this skin, these bones, this life, is.
 
Even the clouds bow
willowy heads, duck
beneath rocky snow.
I surrender.  Blossoms
spread wild across the soft green.
 
Savage buds start
low on stems, peak
just as summer cries
goodbye.  I too must leave.
Return to my rugged city
 
where concrete and trash                  
pile the land.  Inside
the book I carry, I press
a lofty shoot of fire-
weed between pages, home.

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Gabriella M. Belfiglio is an Italian-American, queer artist and activist in Brooklyn, NY. She is a winner of the W.B. Yeats award and a Saltonstall fellow. Her work has been published in many anthologies and journals including The Centrifugal Eye, Folio, Avanti Popolo, Poetic Voices without Borders, Lambda Literary Review, and The Paterson Review. She is part of the poet trio, The Ferlinghetti Girls, with Paola Corso and Phyllis Capello. www.ferlinghettigirls.com www.gabriellabelfiglio.info