i

He was cute, he was like

Sinatra

or maybe I just thought he was but all the girls
thought so too and whaddya know
I hooked him

and then he went Over There

and when he came back well
things was just

different

Yeah so now I’m living in Rio
that’s Brazil
just a little modeling job here and there
I heard he keeps my picture on the

dining room wall

in a frame

ii

1944

this is not the sort of thing one just talks about

1944, he was
an American,
an Italian also.

Marco, my brother, he liked him.

He gave Marco coins and sweets.

He was less than two meters. Marco followed

him all over the city.

Ciao bella, he said. He spoke
terrible Italian.

Once they came here, to
me, to our flat
with the blast-hole in the wall.

I had such dark hair on my head then,
and almost none anywhere else.
My hips had not cradled the bodies
of five tiny children.

Marco says this, outside the door:
la mia sorella è molto bella, signore.

When he left he gave Marco four dollars
American.

This is not something we talk about.
My husband does not know. The priest
does not know. Only Marco knows.

And he
he was the only
American paisano
I ever saw.

iii

I left the city when I couldn’t take it anymore.

When the kids were old enough, I took them and went South.

My brothers put us up until he finally came.

We opened a salon and he worked for the post office.

We had a nice house.

He wrinkled in the sultry southern air.

He shrunk.

He and our son don’t talk anymore.

He and I don’t talk anymore.

But he told our daughter once that he should never have left me.

It’s okay – my brothers took all his furniture.

iv

Can you believe it? I
was dating the mailman.

v

i lived with my sister

autumn 1982
i laughed at her

kissing the mailman
[he was ancient we were coeds]

we were married twice
first in the courthouse

second by my father
and the baptists
his family died hating me

we had two boys and a girl
and my sister laughed at me

kissing the mailman
having the
mailman’s children

good one
real original

my daughter looks just like me
we both have straw hair
we look like sisters

nothing like him

that’s not in the joke

it’s not very funny
that he is seventy-eight
while am thirty-eight

that i have since remarried
that i sent my daughter
to college last year
that the garden in front of the house
is full of color these days
that i have worked hard and here i am

that he is still a mailman
that he tells me he doesn’t sleep anymore
or that he’s waiting on heart
attack number four

the joke is

04/21/2004

Posted on 04/21/2004
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