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dancing girl press, 2015
$7.00 Michelle Reale is an Assistant Professor at Arcadia University. She is the author of 6 collections of poetry and short fiction and her work had been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She does ethnography in Sicily among African refugees and blogs about some of her experiences at SEMPRE SICILIA:
Relativity
During a frenzy of blood relations, forget documentation, DNA, halo types. Listen to the feedback of your ancestors, stick pins in your fingers, press blood bubble to blood bubble. Whole families eat pre-packaged meals while watching theaters of war on cable TV. Commence homelessness. Emancipate that common thread. The swap of memories is paid for in no local currency that you own. Things often originate in countries that you could not even pick out on a map with the best hints. Step out of the chintz-covered parlor furniture; knock a portrait off the polished mantle. The family will fall in and out of love with one another, one by one. Unravel the braid that took your mother her life to perfect with her arthritic fingers on your misshapen head. Someone out there, on the margin, will have great patience with you; show you great respect because of it.
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