Daniela's Appearances

Books by Daniela

Translations by Daniela

Italian American Writers.com

NJPoets.com

PoetsUSA.com
(Wise Women's Web)

Word Wounds and Water Flowers

THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE | SPRING | APRIL LOON
| DANCING SONG FOR MY DAUGHTER | WHEAT

DANIELA GIOSEFFI is a widely published author of poetry, fiction, translations, prose and literary criticism. Recent books areON PREJUDICE: A Gobal Perspective Anchor Doubleday]WORD WOUNDS & WATER FLOWERS: Poems; GOING ON: Poems 2000.[VIA Folios @ Purdue University] andIN BED WITH THE EXOTIC ENEMY: Stories & Novella [Avisson Press, Greensboro, NC.] Daniela is a member of The National Book Critics Circle, PEN American Center, The Academy of American Poets and The Poetry Society of America. In 1990, she won the AMERICAN BOOK AWARD for WOMEN ON WAR [Simon & Schuster.] Her first book of poems, EGGS IN THE LAKE, [BOA Editions, Ltd.] contained poems which won an Award Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts from which she also won a grant award in multi-media and performance poetry. Daniela currently lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York, where she's lived for nearly 30 years, though she was born in New Jersey and spent 35 years of her life in that state where she was educated at Montclair University before going on to complete an MFA with a scholarship from The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, CUA, Wash. D.C. Daniela has been a part of the New York City literary scene for over 30 years and has read her poetry throughout the Metropolitan Area, the USA and Europe,. She been featured on NPR and the BBC as well as presented an many interational book fairs from Barcelona to Venice, Miami to Madrid or San Francisco to New York. She is currently featured on the cover of Poets & Writers Directory: 2001, as one of the early performance poets of our time. She invented the Brooklyn Bridge Poetry Walk in 1971 which featured well known Jazz musician David Amram. Daniela G. is a jazz singer and former choreopoem performer, as well as poet, polaywright, novelist and critic. her 1990 AMERICAN BOOK AWARD WINNER, WOMEN ON WAR: International Voices for the Nuclear Age, will be re-issued by The Feminist Press: NY, 2002. She edits two other websites for literary arts NJPoets.com and Wise Women's Web now incorporated into PoetsUSA.com which was dubbed: Best of the Web, 1998.

Scroll down, please for sample poems from Word Wounds and Water Flowers, VIA FOLIOS 4 / Bordighera Press: P.O. Box 1374, Lafayette, IN. 47902. S. P. Distribution: Tel. 1-800-869-7553. ISBN 1-884419-03-8. Copyright © 1995 by Daniela Gioseffi. All rights reserved.

THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE

Through the "I" of the needle,
death is a country
where people wonder and worry
what it's like to live.
The sullen wish to live
and live soon
to be done with death
and the happy
want to stay dead
forever
wondering
will it hurt to live
and is there death
after
death?

SPRING

has come again.

It's an old tune
you say,
but I say
the heart must learn it anew.

Chickadees and Titmice
pecked amidst winter berries
and pines.

The Rubythroated Hummingbird
now flits among Honeysuckle blooms.
A new calf was born
in the barn on the hill
and a pregnant doe
nibbled my crocuses
before
they were full.

APRIL LOON

One lone loon glides deep along the lake,
lost from her mate,
she wears a smart suit of black tweed,
checkered and flecked with white.
Her black dagger beak
spears a silvery fish, who glides by
as she dives to hide
from the Canada goose swimming too near.
After a long while she surfaces far off.
Ancient heavy boned bird,
different from all the rest,
superb diver, odd singer, loony, laughing like me,
at the beauty of spring,
feeling reborn
after the fear
of a heart seizure.
Blood gone from my womb circulates poorly now
through my chest
as wrinkles prepare me to want
less of life.
Oh, little peach beak of the goldfinch,
yellow as my forsythia bush
which droops its fountains of bright
blossoms over my walk,
oh, bright cardinal flower and bird,
amazing fresh green visions
amidst the thawing woods,
it is enough that April comes again
like an idiot babbling and strewing flowers,
April the kindest
month, reminding me it's enough
to live like a lonely loon lost
on a cool lake, just
to see the bank swallows swoop,
the iridescent tree swallow swarm
across the azure sky,
the barn swallow sail up with the loon's cry,
loony loon am I,
time a threat now
as I call my last cry
over the water, lakes of my eyes,
tears of my years,
like violins in my ears,
moans of the mourning dove.
Let the mocking bird mock all
and the cat bird meow,
let the woodchuck eat my tulips and lilies,
let the squirrels steal
the seeds I put out for the song birds,
let them all live as they please,
I can't help anymore, I can't grieve
the bombs that could be trees,
let me fall on my knees in the grass
and sleep in the meadow on an old deer path.
Let the aphids eat the roses,
the red squirrel chatter, the bee bite,
I'll fly like a loon gaining
air with my old dinasaur bones
over the valley imitating the soar
of the black vulture caught on a current,
searching for carrion,
clean up the death,
take the soul heavenward,
or leave it turned in the earth,
give me the yellow sighs of new green
spring, April the kindest month, enough
of being, just color and light,
sound and smell, song and sight, sweet
flute tunes of song sparrows,
wood or hermit thrushes,
flickery song of the northern flicker,
sing while I cry like a loon lost
in dandalion wine
and anemone, searching for the wood ducks who shyly fly,
white wing stripes on a blue sky, fluttering high
and higher, no clumsy flyer like the loon,
lost in its own wild, plaintive tune,
sing to this lone loon laughing on the lake,
tiny chickadee, grey
tufted titmouse, sing to me, whistle away,
fill my day with lazy wonder.
I'm tired of diving down and rising up
to gulp a silvery fish,
and want to float, heavy boned on the peaceful water,
no waves, no wind,
only gentle balmy ripples of spring. Sing to me
loony common lune tunes, a nocturnal laugh,
of how the last first green of life,
the last noon of sun,
the last glimpse of light
matters.

DANCING SONG FOR MY DAUGHTER

Stars dance their light
the night sky shivers.
Listening to wind,
dance, my daughter.

Wind wanders fields
singing in the wheat.
Hearing the wind's song
dance, my daughter.

Earth spinning holds
children in her skirts,
Feeling the moon's hands
dance, my daughter.
Love loosing sighs
in wet wounded eyes.
Buring my bones, smile
and dance, my daughter.

Love winning fills
all with Her power.
Seeing Her sunrise,
dance, my daughter.

WHEAT

I hadn't seen maggots
close-up before.

What curious things,
the way they squirm and burrow their way
in.
How characteristic of sperm.
Somehow,
how like wheat!

Copyright © 1996 & 1998 by Daniela Gioseffi. All rights reserved. From Word Wounds & Water Flowers.

Back to Top