I Bet This Would Sound So Much Better Translated Into Italian

Did my grandmother know

The reason they called America the promised land?

When she came to this land of opportunity

As a mail order bride did she think

She would be partaking in white privilege?

That the history of plantations and reservations

That made the fat of the land could trump

all the anti-Italian comments

she’d get from second generation Irish

Getting their chance to dish it out

As once they had taken it?

I sincerely doubt it

I don’t think they sold it that way

Just like today Apple doesn’t brag

“Laptops made by authentic Chinese Slave Labor!”

But here she was

In the land of the free & the home of the slave

Just in time for the great depression

And that mythic time of working class togetherness

85 years later, at least one of her grandchildren

believes it might be better back in Italia

not cursing her for ever leaving

still loving much about American culture

and being a product of it, but feeling cut off

not just from Napoli but from the Eritrean blood

clearly evident in our nose and build

despite it being airbrushed from the family tree

that only goes as low as the trunk. White/European.

One of her daughters married a black man named Ting

And they called her a black sheep.

I dream of the Mediterranean. If the Roman Empire

Ever had a soul, it was she. No mere middle passage

But straddling continents as if they could be equal

Bubbling beneath the official imperial reality

I crave that blues cruise more than Crete.

On maps, at least, is seems more cozy than

The Pacific or even the Atlantic, and warmer

And all this before a concept of Europe

                                   Gerrymandered us

But Italy was never as close to Norway or England

As it was to Egypt or Tunisia

Especially when Alps were much harder to cross

Than the sea was….

And I think of Hannibal and his elephants

Deep within our blood, not some imperialist

Aenied screwing over Dido

And that, dear judge, is why I say “other”

When you ask me about my people

Or better leave it blank, given your options

But my blue eyes betray me.

I do not entirely hate Europe.

It seems less Eurocentric today than the USA

But every time I see a map with Europe on top

I turn it around so South Africa is

And we haven’t even gotten into Asia yet

(unless of course you notice

Europe is just part of Asia in drag

Whatever that means)

And I wonder how long I could live near

Vesuvius or Carthage only speaking English.