One Hundred and One Years Old

(For my father, Pasquale Jacketti, born Easter April 3, 1903)

I hardly noticed your birthday
nor lit a candle in memory of your memory,
too busy chasing down bucks, hi ho,
like one of dwarves off to work,
in my own kind of mine -
I work in the brain mines, father,
you worked with coal -
something much more reliable --
too busy chasing the bus, was I,
too busy too weary, was I
thinking about the next attack,
the next boom, the next crumble,
I was thinking that we have seen
enough here, just one long scream
away from New York
and I was not pondering
my bygone ancient
father, and where he might
be living now.

But Happy Birthday, Daddy, anyway,
although I know it's too late,
one day late,
it might as well be a century,
you are not resurrected, or are you?
Pasquale, Easter child.


Manifesto

Clone me not.

Make no army of
my bones -
don't pluck my hair
for random
duplication -
don't make a
smart doll of me
for the second coming
of K-Mart.

And while you're at it -
don't suck these brains
out of my nose,
don't weigh my heart
or perfume my leftovers
until time
meets the dinosaurs.

Last Sunday's paper
offered a coupon
for eternity, just behind the
frozen foods,
and so, my Love, I beg
you

don't quick-freeze me
next to Walt Disney's popsicle
of a sarcophagus.

Between the old and the new,
we live the cure.


Jasmine

The voice of
Jasmine
is ancient-sweet,
a promise
in blossom - curative
whiff
of my love -
sweet Jasmine
purrs like
the sun
erasing
the wounds of
days when no flowers
bloomed
between us -
or on Earth.

^

Biography

Warnborough University Creative Writing Programme Director, Dr Maria Jacketti, is a poet, fiction writer, educator, and translator. She has translated A Gabriela Mistral Reader (White Pine Press), and the following collections by Pablo Neruda: Heaven Stones (Cross Cultural Communications), Maremoto, with Dennis Maloney (White Pine Press), Garden Odes (Latin American Literary Review Press) and Cantos Ceremoniales, Ceremonial Songs (Latin American Literary Review Press). Dr. Jacketti is a recipient of a poetry fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (1985) and holds a Master's degree in creative writing from New York University and a Ph.D. from Warnborough University. She lives in Bayonne, New Jersey, with her husband, daughter, and six cats.