{"id":297,"date":"2013-12-03T00:59:11","date_gmt":"2013-12-03T00:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=297"},"modified":"2014-01-16T21:32:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-16T21:32:00","slug":"i-open-a-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=297","title":{"rendered":"I OPEN A BOX – Maria Mazziotti Gillan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2026and find inside a picture,
\nof myself as a child, sitting
\non a small chair, wearing overalls
\nand shoes that must have been
\nhand-me-downs because they are
\nso worn the sole is coming loose.
\nI am no more than 18 months
\nold and cannot have been walking
\nall that long.\u00a0 I am squinting
\ninto the sun, my nose crinkling
\nwith effort the way it crinkles now
\nwhen I am trying to see in bright light.
\nBehind me, the six family tenement
\nwhere I was born on 5th<\/sup> Avenue
\nin Paterson, the rickety stairs rise up
\nthree floors, the porches tilt a bit
\nas though they might fall off
\nif someone were to jump on them
\ntoo hard.\u00a0 My mother delivered
\nme herself in this coldwater flat.
\nThe doctor didn\u2019t get to her in time,
\nand when he did, he, in his pressed
\nand starched white shirt and expensive
\nsuit and polished shoes, stood at the door
\nand didn\u2019t enter the room. My mother
\ncut the cord and washed me off, wrapped
\nme in a clean blanket. When she
\nwas dying years later, she said,
\n\u201cThe doctor didn\u2019t even come into
\nthe room.\u00a0 He washed his hands, wiped
\nthem on one of the rough linen towels
\nI brought from Italy, stood in the doorway.
\n\u201cYou\u2019ll be okay,\u201d he said, and left.
\n\u201cOh, well,\u201d my mother said, \u201cI think
\nhe was afraid of catching it.\u201d
\n\u201cCatching what?\u201d I asked.
\n\u201cPoverty,\u201d\u00a0she said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\"photo,<\/a><\/b>Maria Mazziotti Gillan is a recipient of the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers<\/i>, and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us <\/b><\/i>(Guernica Editions). She is the Founder \/Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and editor of the Paterson Literary Review.<\/i>\u00a0She is also Director of the Creative Writing Program and Professor of Poetry at Binghamton University-SUNY.\u00a0 She has published 16 books, and her most recent are The Place I Call Home <\/i>(NYQ Books, 2012) and Writing Poetry to Save Your Life:\u00a0 How to Find the Courage to Tell Your Stories <\/i>(MiroLand, Guernica, 2013). She has two books of poetry forthcoming in Fall 2013, entitled, The Silence in an Empty House<\/i> (NYQ Books) and Ancestor\u2019s Song<\/i> (Bordighera Press).\u00a0 With her daughter, Jennifer, she is co-editor of four anthologies. Visit her website and blog at www.mariagillan.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2026and find inside a picture, of myself as a child, sitting on a small chair, wearing overalls and shoes that must have been hand-me-downs because they are so worn the sole is coming loose. I am no more than 18 months old and cannot have been walking all that long.\u00a0 I am squinting into the [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[52,51,53],"class_list":["post-297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-paterson","tag-photo","tag-wasabi-bob"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1539,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions\/1539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}