Nonna dusts flour kneads homemade dough on the formica, aluminum altar in the center of the pink basement the kitchen table rocks with her movement she shows me how to arrange black olives in the squared pizza dough I follow her thick and swollen fingers along the edges of the pan my 6 year old fingers fill in the white spaces She pours olive oil spreads September's homemade sauce from a heated mason jar grates mozzarella I break the first commandment of the kitchen and steal a taste of each raw ingredient Nonna removes my hand from the dough places a piece of bread in my mouth her hands smell of fresh parsley and basil She gives me orders in Italian I respond in English Foreign and native are the same to me After lunch, Nonna and I walk down Main Street to Schweitzer's Clothing Store Rose the clerk understands improvised sign language I am a first grade translator I ask the bus driver for directions does he go to the Social Security building form a line, form A, form B, sign here a fill in for intimate discussion We arrive home to the sanctity of the kitchen all the rituals are in place vino e pane a tavola mangia

the sun sets behind a patchwork of Route 46 used car dealers a reed filled lot on the south banks of the hackensack river used to be a drive-in theatre firestone wheels hum on steel grates of a drawbridge dad tells me the moon is following us down and then up the two blocks of catherine street hill back to our first floor hampshire house apartment the scent of turpentine and nicotine at 5 years old, i am aware of intoxicating flammables dad measures distance with one eye closed thumb sized against a blank canvass a Winston cigarette dangles from the left corner of his mouth i place the end of a paintbrush in a pencil sharpener, he smiles mixes oil paint on a wood palette at 7 years old i can name Dali, Picasso, Escher dad wears his keys on the loop of his janitor work pants when he comes home i clip his keyring to my levis he lets me steer along anderson ave the Sunday morning drive to pedoto's bakery shop 1971 hunter green oldsmobile cutlass white racing stripes on the front and back hood green vinyl bucket seats are rough and textured my fingers fit in the smooth grooves of the steering wheel DMV inspection sticker a centered black number 10 the year 1977 split into yellow corners saturday in hudson terrace park the grass is dotted with daiseys and dandelions he buys me a red and yellow plastic helicopter the kind with the pull-string which propels it into the sky blue, unmoving like one of dad's easel paintings a rainy april dawn i question the existence of the easter bunny dad turns his thumbprints into rabbit prints along my bedroom windowsill in nonno's backyard dad builds a wooden swing set my name painted in black thick letters on a piece of plywood at the tip of the a-frame when i was 11, mom and dad divorced the swing set taken apart i looked out of the basement window white pieces of wood stacked in a debris pile along the metal garden fence my name plate hung from a twisted rusty nail dad never talks about his parents his father, a disinherited doctor who died at 98 or his calabrisella mother he told me one story about his childhood the american gi that gave him a hershey bar as soldiers marched through ferrazzano past the dusty spine of a cathedral he left home at 17 to join the italian army when i was 17 dad gave me his father's binoculars he handed me the brown leather carrying case we stared out of his hi-rise window into the twilight of rush hour headlamps flashing red lights of the george washington bridge we said nothing he and I hugged once when he got remarried his hand squeezed the midsection of my back i tugged his right shoulder then we pulled away as if our breath had stopped dad and i are incomplete obscured by red and blue hues misplaced angles, endless stairwells fragmented like the winding white lights of the parkway on a hazy August night

a stem reaches out from a clogged gutter like the cold thin finger of an anxious child Jakeema was shot on a bare sidewalk his 10 speed bicycle wilted against the community center fence a disposed pack of Newports flutters under a chalky oak the bronchitis cough of a 5 year old girl stammers in damp July air the night pops like a beer can the hiss of wet aluminum rain on tar a child's saliva stained pillowcase the stale sticky mouth of fear waits for the drive-by the drop off the pick up a 17 year old boy bent and fatigued sits on a loose-limbed porch he is the under-aged minimum waged renter debtor the bottomless blades of broken glass the frail strands of alleyway weeds burn and smolder like the salty ashes of Darfur