{"id":2000,"date":"2013-09-22T22:34:51","date_gmt":"2013-09-22T22:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/?p=2000"},"modified":"2017-07-11T04:04:36","modified_gmt":"2017-07-11T04:04:36","slug":"fuoco-michael-campagnoli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/fuoco-michael-campagnoli\/","title":{"rendered":"Fuoco by Michael Campagnoli"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Campagnoli<\/a><\/h1>\n

Fuoco<\/h1>\n

by\u00a0Michael Campagnoli<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd do you know what I said?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a summer night and I\u2019m very young.
\nWe\u2019re sitting in lawn chairs out back by his garden,
\nwatching the shore traffic below on Route 61.
\nIt\u2019s hot and he\u2019s drinking wine from a long-necked bottle.
\nI don\u2019t like it. It scares me. My mother has filled me
\nwith stories of what happens when men drink.
\nI have a Cott\u2019s Cream Soda with ice, served in a tall
\nglass that once was a jelly jar.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd do you know what I said?\u201d he says again.<\/p>\n

I know what he said. I\u2019ve heard it a thousand times.
\nIn the dark of night, the S.S. Anglia
\nglides past Battery Park, approaches
\nthe Lower East Side.
\nBelow decks, a young man
\npeers from black steerage
\ninto the black night,
\nhis wife and infant son
\nhuddled nearby.
\nBefore them sprawls a catacomb
\nof tangled streets,
\ncrowded tenements,
\nairless sweatshops,
\na panoply of factories
\nbelching heat and light.<\/p>\n

He looks at them,
\nthinking of Dante,
\nas he enter the rain-wet New World<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, what did you say?\u201d I say, pretending.<\/p>\n

He looks off, far into the evening sky,
\nabove rows of houses,
\nthe endless lines of cars and grey exhaust.<\/p>\n

\u201cNon so come<\/em>,\u201d he says, \u201csi puo vivere<\/em>
\n in questo fuoco<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he waits, knowing that I will ask.
\nDoes he forget that he\u2019s told me so many times?
\nOr does he like that it\u2019s become a ritual?
\nOur ritual.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does that mean, Nonno?\u201d
\nHe looks at me gravely.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not know how,\u201d he says,<\/em>
\n \u201cit is possible. . .<\/em>
\n to live<\/em>
\n in such fire<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

He shakes his head
\nI shake my head, too.<\/p>\n

Nonno Michele came to this country in 1908.
\nEducated. An artist. Did not believe the stories
\nof easy wealth and streets of gold,
\nbut did believe, \u201cThe Promise<\/em>.\u201d
\nWhat he found were jeers
\nof \u201cdago\u201d and \u201cwop\u201d and \u201cgreaseball,\u201d
\nwas handed a shovel,
\ncalled a \u201cginy\u201d ditch digger.
\nEventually, he practiced his craft
\nBut as a carver of gravestones, water fountains,
\nthe sarcophagi of rich people\u2019s mausoleums.<\/p>\n

My father told me
\nabout the day he watched Nonno,
\neyes fierce and brokenhearted,
\ntears cutting his cheeks like acid,
\nas the cold chisel edged the names
\nof his wife and only female child. A week apart.
\nA bleak December day.<\/p>\n

Though America broke its promise to him,
\nhe remained faithful. He pronounced it,
\nwould always pronounce it,
\n\u201cAh-meddy-ga,\u201d<\/em>
\nwith a certain gossamer lightness,
\nas if the word itself,
\n\u201cAh-meddy-ga,\u201d<\/em>
\nwere dream enough.<\/p>\n

###<\/p>\n

Michael Campagnoli has worked as a waiter, fisherman, journalist, painter, and short-order cook. He taught literature and writing at Indiana University while studying for a Ph.D. His awards have included the New Letters Poetry Award, the All Nations Press Chapbook Award, and The Chiron Review Novella Prize. His fiction and poetry have appeared in New Letters, Nimrod, Southern Humanities Review, Rosebud, Natural Bridge, Inkwell, Palimpsest, Rattle, Yellow Medicine Review, Crucible, and elsewhere. He\u2019s published three chapbooks of poetry. His poems and stories have been anthologized in Best New Writing of 2010 and ISFN’s Anthology #1. Three of his poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Campagnoli has worked as a waiter, fisherman, journalist, painter, and short-order cook. He taught literature and writing at Indiana University<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2014,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[425],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-summer-poems"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}