Breath & Shadow

POETRY

NATALIA IN A PAST LIFE

By Elizabeth Marchitti

One

Owner of a town house
in suburban New Jersey,
blond, slender,
former physicist, now poet,
she of the intricate metaphor
and lyrical images ––

came to the USA many years ago,
still has a charming Russian accent,
as well as a chronic lung problem.
She carries her portable oxygen tank
everywhere, disconnects temporarily
to read her poems.

In Russia, before her divorce,
she and her husband owned a car,
but she was not allowed to drive.
When she came here, she bought a car
of her own and learned to drive.

She loved driving to New York City,
loved driving in New York City,
loved reading her poems in the city,
and hearing the poems others read there.

Two

One warm May Saturday
we read poems together
at The Bowery Club.
Adventurous she may be,
but the Lincoln Tunnel’s not her thing;
gridlock at the George Washington Bridge,
teeming traffic on the West Side Highway.

Still, Natalia kept saying,
I love New York. I love New York.
Look at the different kinds of people.
Look at the clothes they’re wearing.
Only in New York!

In normal city traffic,
each person speeding, switching lanes,
driving as if he were the only one on the road,
Natalia kept noticing cars and naming brands ––
Toyota, Jaguar, Nissan Centra ––
till, stumped by the sight of a Chrysler PT Cruiser,
she asked me what it was.

Once, wishing to cut in front of a taxi,
she gave the driver a wave and a smile,
he smiled back, and gestured, Go ahead.

If Natalia wasn't a poet,
she could have been
a New York taxi driver.

Elizabeth Marchitti has had work published in The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Lips, The Paterson Literary Review, Sensations Magazine, Spinddrift and Without Halos, as well as previously in Breath and Shadow. Her poems have been finalists in The Allen Ginsberg Contest three times. On October 7^th, 2006 she read poems from her new chapbook, Pause .  .  . And Begin Again, at the Walt Whitman Festival in Ocean Grove, New Jersey.