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COLD SHOULDERS & EVIL EYES : STEADYING GAZES & WARM EMBRACES
Inclusion and Exclusion in Our Daily Lives
PART V:  FAMILY & HISTORY

ANDREI GURUIANU


INSOMNIA


When I was born,
father could still do
John Travolta impressions.
Polyester shirts clung
to his chest and shoulders,
and pants bulged
where they should
instead of trying to hide
the bulge of his stomach.
That was before I was born,
before America.
Now at three in the morning
he’s in the kitchen,
and it sounds like mice
have gotten into the cupboards.
Wrappers crinkle,
boxes tear open,
the fridge hisses
open and closed.
He cannot sleep at night.
Hasn’t been able to for years.
First it was his father,
dead only days
after his wedding,
then leaving family and home
never to return.
Then it was the immigrant jokes,
calloused insults,
lost jobs over his accent.
Then it was
the heart attack
that finally
knocked him down,
forced him
to lie on his back,
helpless without choice
like a wounded animal.
These days
father gets out of bed
shrouded in long shadows
cast by passing cars
on Queens Boulevard,
his big belly
pointing the way
as he groans
like an old man.
I hear his heavy grunts,
the tired breath
through thin bedroom walls
as he makes his way
to the kitchen
where light
outlines the door
in dreamy white.
There he’ll sit
hunched over the
square wood table top  
shoving food in his mouth
until mother wakes
from his absence,
yells at him to stop.
He eats now, drinks,
anything,
not because he’s hungry,
but to keep away
the rumble of longing
for times when
he felt he was needed,
listened to, respected.
If there wasn’t enough food
at least there was enough work
to keep his mind occupied
and help him forget
that he’s never worked
a single day for himself
and that men his own age
treat him like a child
when strange syllables
get stuck to his tongue
the way snowflakes pause
then disappear without a trace.   




FEAR HAS A WAY OF REMEMBERING US


Because in the right light the horizontal bars
on her plastic window blinds appear like cuts
made by the rolling treads of a German tank,
my aunt stays hidden behind thick,
dark curtains drawn tight with stickpins.
That’s how she lives her old days in America,
always anticipating the next Nazi raid,
twin engine planes and sirens blaring,
clocking with precision the hours of night
when she crouched huddled underground,
hoarding meager rations of water and bread.
Like a soldier returning home,
she talks of suffering, of the shattered lives
she left along desolate fields in ’44
but which like a recurring nightmare
never give her peace outside the house,  
not a single step without a cautious glance.
Even now, tucked away in suburban Queens,
her house is a modern day bunker,
iron grate windows and doors bolted,
alarmed at the twist of a silver key
that she keeps safety pinned during the day
to the elastic waistband of her skirt.
These days, with her favorite TV shows
as daily interruptions,
she still expects a bomb to drop and detonate,
disaster lurking around every corner.


DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

In these poems, who is doing the including?  Why?


AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY

In “Fear Has a Way of Remembering Us” and “Insomnia” I explored the experience of two generations of Romanian immigrants to the United States, both of which came in the wake of violent conflicts. In the former, my aunt arrived in the U.S. following World War II and in the latter my father (and the rest of our family) arrived in the U.S. following the Romanian revolution of 1989. I was interested by what those moments of trauma leave imprinted in our minds and on our personalities and for how long we carry them with us. I believe that no matter what the immigrant experience holds for us, there are parts of ourselves that can never be forgotten, excised, or even forgiven.

For the immigrant, life I feel is always lived with one foot in one door and one foot in another. The extent to which we switch or travel between these physical and psychological locations depends on a multitude of factors that differs from individual to individual. Trauma, fear, paranoia, poverty, persecution – all play a role in how we navigate our two worlds. One thing that doesn’t change, however, is the knowledge that something of ourselves, of our past, has been changed forever, if not completely lost.





ANDREI GURUIANU is a Romanian-born writer living in New York. He is the author of a poetry collection, Days When I Saw the Horizon Bleed (FootHills Publishing, 2006) and a chapbook, It Was Like That Once (Pudding House, 2008). He is pursuing a Ph.D. in English at Binghamton University, and teaches writing at Ithaca College, NY. He is the founder and editor of the literary journal The Broome Review (www.thebroomereview.com).  He is also the editor of the forthcoming anthology Twenty Years After the Fall (Wising Up Press).


Copyright Wising Up Press 2009

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Universal Table   Finding the We in Them, the Us in You.   Wising Up Press
www.universaltable.org      P.O. Box 2122, Decatur, GA 30031-2122      404-276-6046