Marc Alan Di Martino
Marc Alan Di Martino is the author of Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City Press, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Bad Lilies, Palette, Rattle and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His translation Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco will be published by World Poetry Books in 2024. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy. marcalandimartino.com
Take Me to Queens
My daughter’s new t-shirt reads, “Queens, NY.”
It’s one of those t-shirts worn by people
who’ve never been to Queens, sold
in imitation boutiques across the world.
I tell her I lived in Queens once, in a tiny
apartment on 38th St. and Astoria Blvd.
(or so the old address resurfaces
in memory). I tell her how I loved
the Greek groceries selling olives and feta
by the pound, about the dolmadakia
and spanakopita at the two restaurants
I ate at, about the dog we rescued in Greece
and took back to Queens, and of course
how we were thrown out of our apartment
by our Greek-speaking landlord. “No dogs.”
I only learned one word of Greek in Queens:
“oxi” – no – as I sat in the rental agency,
snow flaking outside, listening to the din
of agents and landlords discussing my fitness
to rent their one-room studio apartment
at what amounted to a half-month’s wages.
It was a dump, but I loved it. It was mine,
the only place I’ve ever lived alone
my entire life. “Take me to Queens,” she says.
