The small silver crosses on thin silver chains,
pendant globes the size of a pea,
a mustard seed enshrined within,
the add-a-pearl necklaces,
each white seed a gift
of another year, the promise of life,
they hung them around our necks,
across our bird-like breasts
those years in the South when
the memories of malaria in the fields,
diphtheria and scarlet fever and whooping cough,
death in the rooms and wards
remained like yellowing photographs,
scraps of time at the back of a dresser drawer
seemingly forgotten but always there,
My mother coming into my room
Kneeling with me by the bed,
“Now I lay me down to sleep. . .”,
then rising to turn off the gas jet
to the white enamel heater with the grate
glowing like a set of grinning teeth,
I so wished she would leave it on,
it would be so cold in the room in the morning
when I got up to dress for my first-grade class
but then she had explained many times
the fire might be blown out,
then the gas would come
and I would die,
so I was saved every winter night
from imminent death,
She was the sort of person
who always threw the salt
over her left shoulder
to appease the spirits of destruction
lurking nearby, the silent destroyers
who came to carry off children
especially at night
in the dark,
Helen, the black woman who worked
and worked and worked
in our house and took care of us
when she had so little to care for herself,
shouting to us when we wouldn't come in
from playing hide-and-seek around the houses
evenings in the neighborhood as it got darker and darker,
“The devil's comin’ to get y’all,”
So we wore the silver crosses,
the mustard seeds, the pearls
they put over our breasts,
and kept the small books of testaments and prayers
they placed in our hands
by our beds
because we believed them,
because we knew
they loved us.
*Elizabeth Brunazzi was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and grew up in East Texas. She graduated with honors from All Saints Episcopal College, Vicksburg, Mississippi. She received her AB in French from Stanford University; MS in French and Applied Linguistics, and MA in English Literature from Georgetown University. She was awarded the PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton University, with highest honors from the Princeton Alumni Association for Excellence in Graduate Teaching; and the Council for the Humanities for the Whiting Foundation Dissertation Award.
Her teaching appointments include Princeton University, Pomona College, Wesleyan University, New York University, Rutgers University, and George Washington University. Her fellowships and residencies include the Camargo Foundation, La Fondation des Treilles, Callaloo invitational writers' workshops; and a French government, three-year residential award under the Compétences et Talents program for research and writing in France.
Her published essays and reviews have appeared in the journals Les Lettres modernes, James Joyce Quarterly, European Joyce Studies and French Cultural Studies ; and in the collection of essays Culture and Daily Life in Occupied France, eds. Elizabeth Brunazzi and Jeanine Plottel
Her poetry and prose poetry in English and French are published in the journals Le Nouveau receuil, La Traductière, and most recently, the online review and publisher, Recoursaupoeme.fr, Recoursaupoemeediteurs.com which published her bilingual ebooks The Beginning Ends Here/Le Commencement prend fin ici (illustrated by Bernadette Genoud-Prachet), EngIish and French texts, Elizabeth Brunazzi; republished, Lambert Academic Publishers, 2019; Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators/Photos bébés de dictateurs célèbres, original English text by Charles Simic, French translation, Elizabeth Brunazzi; and Out of the Wasteland/De la Terre de désolation, original English text by Maja Herman-Sekulič, French translation, Elizabeth Brunazzi.
Her short fiction was published by Washington Review, her story “The Baby Has Wings” nominated by editor Pati Griffith for a Pushcart Prize; and, her story “Mostly They Have None,” in the collection One in Three Women with Cancer Confront an Epidemic, Cleis Press.
Her most recent article on “Tourmente sur l'Afghanistan, Grand Reporter Andrée Viollis and Civil War in Afghanistan, 1929” was published in the February, 2019 issue of French Cultural Studies, UK. She has accepted a lectureship to teach French at the University of New Mexico, beginning in the Fall, 2019. She is currently working as the organizer and co-editor of a new anthology of contemporary Haitian poetry.
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