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Sharing Poems of Inclusion

Posted by Yves Etheart

Queens Poet Laureate Maria Lisella

We hope you will join us at our 31-Hour Open House at Corona Community Library. Everyone is welcome!

The closing event during our Open House will be an open mic with Queens Poet Laureate Maria Lisella. Through the power of poetic expression, Maria and a group of poets of various ethnic backgrounds will help us affirm that Queens Library is here for everyone, no matter where you come from, who you love, or what you believe. We also welcome you to join our poets and read your own poem of inclusion! 

In the spirit of this upcoming event, we were honored to have the Queens Poet Laureate share two of her own poems that tell stories of diversity and inclusion.

As Maria said, “Queens is indeed my muse, and one reason for that is simply that I see my own ancestors—near and far—in all the new faces from everywhere…Queens, truly, is America!”


Cornrows
by Maria Lisella

Cheryl’s cornrows are
a maze of braids that crisscross
her round head topping
her dark, Trinidadian neck.

Her mother jelly-coats
her coffee-colored fingers to move
rapid and sure through nappy, crinkled hair.

She pulls one rope of hair
over the other, over the other,
over the other, until
the braids are locked down tight
with barrettes, ribbons, and bows.

Around the corner at Jean's Beauty Parlor
white women plop into wide leather chairs
as metallic chemicals crimp and whip
their soft hair into prim tootsie roll curls.

Across the street, Sylvia’s is crammed
arm to shiny bronze arm with Black women
pressing their hair—make it straight, straight,
straight, shiny, smooth as seals—take the nap out.

Cheryl and I watch Angela Davis,
who never lived in Queens,
the land of smooth and straight,
cry out of the TV.

She raises her fist past a brazen halo
of naturally kinky hair—
letting her ‘fro fly loud and free,
as if her hair said, "I will not hide,
I am trouble, see me now."

Cheryl's cornrows, a puzzle of braids
locked down tight, tight, tight.
I touch my smooth hair,
a single rope down my spine
wishing all the while
best friends could look more alike.


Bagel Shop, Astoria, Queens
by Maria Lisella

Her grandmother’s silver braid brushes
my back. We are that close
in the Broadway bagel shop.
Her shoulders slump
inside the ruffled polyester blouse
no match for the loomed cotton ones
with hand-crocheted collars
she left back home.
I turn my head, look over her shoulder
to the sharp eyes in the copper
Mestiza face that belongs
to her granddaughter, smiling
a wide grin as she demonstrates
to abuelita how one chews
an American, big-as-a-flying-saucer
bagel oozing with cream cheese
managing to keep the queso
off her shirt or the table.
They are not the Jewish bagels
I came to love as a girl.
Those could fit in the palm of my hand.
Called mini bagels now,
only people on diets order them
or thin-as-reeds Japanese tourists
who file in to taste everything American.
No matter that the counter girls
are from Puebla, Mexico, the owner Korean.
And the cream cheese, not the farmer
cheese Jews and Germans brought
to the Lower East Side, dry and crumbly.
The American type manufactured by Kraft,
works as a schmear that neither
slides nor slips off tough round bread.
Add a lop of coral lox for the prize.
My Calabrese grandmother
would decry eating fish and cheese
together, would not be amused
at how much of it I would eat.