My mother sang opera off-key
while she worked in her kitchen,
favored Pagliacci, a story
of entanglement. The dissonance
irritated me as a teenager
but became part of what I hold
close, the longing for what itches
most after it's gone, for the woman
who never got to use her passport.
Have a career, she advised. It's less
boring. I had a primeval fear
she would devour me,
like the gerbil mother I once observed
in a tank who meticulously
negated all her babies.
Have your own money.
Don't depend on any man.
The colonized body has two choices,
and either way, La commedia è finita!
Lie down with the devil.
Don't lie down.
There will be nothing when you run
out of figs. You will be
like the fireflies, practically gone.
