his well-managed, well-tended furnace
produces great fruit.
Paolo creates himself
in each goblet, beaker, bowl
he blows. He cannot really see
himself without his reflection
in the glass’s eye.
Uncle Giova knows nothing
but glass; it is his past, present,
and future—the fornica
is his home.
I love glass
because I love my father.
After Father died
I worked like a nun
to prepare his sacred batches.
My father stood beside me;
his specter guided my hand.
“Maria, not too much manganese.”
After we lost him,
I turned to glass.
Mother turned away from it.
She shrouded goblets and mirrors;
we drank from clay.
At first I did not understand.
But one day, thinking about my father,
I held up a mirror
and saw my mother’s eyes.
RESTRICTED
At fifteen all doors
began to lock around me.
I could hear the turning keys.
I pounded on the walls.
No one told me why
I had to stay inside my room.
Had I mistreated the glass
I so loved? No.
What had I done?
Giovanna finally explained,
“You must be a lady
if you hope to marry a senator.”
She eyed me then as never before,
like men I witnessed about to duel.
“If it is possible for you to be a lady.
And if not, well then perhaps …”
Vanna’s eyes shifted back
to the sister I knew.
“Maria, is it not enough
that Father loved you best?”
But before her tears
she turned away.
For the past several months
I have been treated
more delicately
than the Doge’s chandelier.
My complexion
to remain powder white, hands smooth
and clean, no ink tainting my nails.
My virtue must be as the purest cristallo;
I can go nowhere unchaperoned.
All the while my sister’s silent sorrow
thrusts glass shards into my heart.
GIOVANNA
My sister’s long golden locks
glimmer in sunlight;
how her crown of hair
would jewel in Venice
away from Murano’s fire and ash.
She labors morning and night
to brush away this island’s soot.
When I was fourteen and Vanna
was fifteen, we decided to play
a trick on our older brothers,
Marino and Paolo.
We bound each other’s hands,
moaned as though we had burned
ourselves stoking the furnace.
Marino’s tan turned to salt.
He said, “You must stay inside
and apply the treatment.”
Paolo plugged his nose.
The treatment, a muddy goop
our maid Carlotta prepares,
consists primarily of dung.
But it salves wounds.
As soon as the boys set to their tasks,
Giovanna declared,
“The day is too beautiful to stay inside,”
and whisked me away faster than a fierce gale
fuels clouds through the sky.
Murano’s streets curve and twist
like eels. We might have been
lost in the smoke of all the fornicas.
But the sun owned Murano
that day, the sky colored like the sea,
no rain in view. And Vanna
seemed to know where she was going.
I might have been afraid we would
get in trouble for being out,
two girls alone, but none seemed to notice.
Merchants bartered glass to boatmen.
Citizens swam through the streets
with great haste, as though they fled from fire.
Vanna serpentined me
down an alley past the cathedral
to a small shop. Inside, a painting
of Venice’s Grand Canal
hung quietly on the wall.
Meticulous in its detail,
but it somehow felt dead.
The painting celebrated the holy day
Corpus Christi and the procession
through the Piazza San Marco,
but it was as though the painter
felt not the joy of his subject
nor the joy of his creation.
Giovanna tugged my arm.
“They have charcoal and red chalk,
pink paper, just like the painters use.
I thought you might like—”
I cut her off. “I have heard of these,
but I have no coin.”
She pulled a bolognini from her sleeve.
I whispered, “Where did you get that?
We will be robbed.”
Vanna shook her head.
“You worry too much, Maria.
Select what you like.
I will manage the rest.”
I hugged her tight enough to crack
her bones. “I’ll pay you back.”
She smiled. “Yes, you will.”
NOT MY MOTHER’S DAUGHTER
I spend my days now
with a woman I do not understand.
It is as though Mother speaks French.
She presents to me a carved wooden box
painted with fine water lilies.
I turn it around in the light.
“This is exquisite,” I say.
“Thank you, Mother.
I will store my inks and quills
in here!” I move to kiss her cheek.
Mother waves me away.
She says, “No, open it up.
The gift is inside.”
A silver brush and comb,
far more expensive than any
Giovanna has owned,
lie like weapons
in the velvet-lined box.
“Vanna will love these.”
I say aloud what I meant
to keep in my head.
Mother squawks at me
like an angry goose.
“No. They are for you.
They were my grandmother’s.
You alone will use them
to brush your hair
one hundred times each day.”
Oh, Vanna will hate me if she sees these.
This brush and comb belong to her
like limbs extending from her wrist.
Her name should be engraved
on the handles.
The box alone feels like mine.
Dear Lord, why did Father
disturb tradition?
“Mother, this is better suited
for Vanna,” I begin,
but like my sister
Mother’s ears sew closed to my voice.
She directs me from her room.
If Father were here,
at least I could speak to him
about all of this.
Mother is like Murano’s stone wall,
impenetrable.
I know not
how to reason with stone,
only to crush it,
and I cannot do that.
THE BRUSH-OFF
I sneak the box into our room
and nestle it behind my dresses.
How I will stroke my hair
one hundred times
without Giovanna noticing,
I cannot fathom!
Giovanna wake
s me
just as the sun eases
above the sea.
She holds the painted box.
“Where did you get this?”
“It is a gift for you from Mother.
I was supposed to hide it from you.”
Giovanna looks as though
she might sing.
“I must thank her right away.
The brush and comb set
is so beautiful, exquisitely
beautiful!”
“No.” I grab her arm.
“I don’t understand.”
She shakes her head.
“Well, you see—” I begin.
“No, I don’t. Tell the truth.
On the Virgin Mary’s soul,
is the brush set yours or mine?”
Giovanna’s eyes slay me.
I look down. “They are mine.”
But then quickly add,
“But they should be yours.
I give them to you.”
“No.” Giovanna sinks.
“You cannot do that.”
She squares herself away from me,
sets the box on my dresser,
and her voice falls dumb.
SECRET SKETCHINGS
Drawing emotional pictures
is whimsical child’s play;
I am to pack my pencils, inks,
and tablets away.
All the scenes of craftsmen
in the rain, furnace flames,
the canal, cathedral, glass boats,
and portraits of my family
that Mother so adored
she tucks under her bed
as though she buries me
beneath her mattress.
“I thought it was customary
for a girl to have talent?”
I ask Mother as she peels
the last sketchbook she can find
from my arms.
“No, Maria,” Mother corrects.
“You should have an amusement.
So, yes, you shall say that you draw,
and draw the nobleman in his glory
or other lovely things like flowers,
but none of this art
that looks like a man might have drawn it.”
PAOLO AND THE COURTESAN
Across the Grand Canal
on the weedy side of Murano,
Father said the mermaidens
reign. Beautiful temptresses
who cast out golden nets
and snare many fish.
Father never swam there,
but Uncle Giova
still fills his pockets
with glass bracelets
and comes home after moonrise
more than once a week.
Once my uncle left
a set of jade combs
on Giovanna’s dresser.
Another morning
I found a sketchbook
filled with drawings
of ladies in fine attire
looking into mirrors.
Masterful drawings
in terms of light
and perspective.
I learned to draw
in spatial dimensions
studying this book.
“Who drew these?”
I asked Uncle.
He whispered in my ear,
“A beautiful woman.”
I nodded.
“A siren of the sea.”
My ears identify the click
of Paolo’s boots as dawn blinks
through the window.
He wears last night’s cloak.
Sea perfume wafts up the stairs
like the scent of baking bread,
the same aroma flavoring
the sketchbook
Uncle bestowed upon me.
Paolo arrives late to the furnace,
and when he sets to leave before
dusk, Marino stomps after him.
“Your goblets today are shoddy.”
They bicker like boatmen
about to draw swords,
loud voices in the street
for all the neighborhood ears.
Paolo shoves his pontil
into Marino’s hands.
“Do it yourself, then.”
Paolo steers our gondola
quickly toward the weeds,
vanishes into the smoke
and fog for three days.
Our furnace produces
no glass in Paolo’s absence;
the orders for English betrothal goblets
pile up like debtor’s notes.
Paolo returns, biretta in hand,
and kneels before Mother’s tears.
He kisses her glove.
“I am sorry, Mother, forgive me,
but this is too much alone.
Gaffing cannot be all that I do.”
“I know, my son.”
She pats his head.
“I will speak with Marino.”
LEARNING TO BE A LADY
is like learning
to live within a shell,
to be a crustacean encased
in a small white
uncomfortable world.
You hear the ocean
whirl about you
but feel not the wet
nor ride the wave
nor see the sun.
Bedded on the sand,
protected from harm
with the other fair dainty shells,
all safely collected
so no damage be done
to precious contents.
I cannot venture outside my cage,
cannot dirty my gloves.
This was not how Father
raised me, some fragile figurine
teetering on the ledge—
how can this be his greatest
wish for me?
Did he not think me capable of more?
My cheeks red as a fornica,
I fall to my knees.
“Hail Mary, full of grace,
forgive me my insolence and disrespect.
I do not mean to be so ungrateful.
Giovanna would shear her head
to be in my position. I am blessed
to be of such good fortune.”
MY INSOLENCE STARVES MY FAMILY
Marino’s hands wring tightly
at the supper table;
he never says it,
but I know an influx of ducats
would fuel the second furnace
and hire additional hands.
If I marry well, then Marino
may take a wife
and acquire a large dowry
for our family.
I will suck in my ribs
while Mother bodices me
into my corset.
I will see my pinching shoes as fins.
I announce at the table,
“We shall settle on my proper
suitor, all of us, before
I turn sixteen.”
Mother pushes back her
plate and beaker.
“We have much work ahead.”
TRIAL BY FIRE: FIRST SUITOR
“You shall learn by doing,”
Mother determines, “for we have
precious little time.
The Barovier name was worth
a lot more a few years ago.”
Traditionally girls do not meet
with men. Fathers arrange
marriages, or heads of families do,
but Marino and Uncle
are more frenzied than netted sharks,
and Mother and I cannot leave Murano
to attend parties and meet noble ladies
with eligible sons, so we break
tradition and invite bachelors
approved by my brothers
into our home to visit Mother and me.
Fastened into a puffy-sleeved
blue velvet gown,
; a tiara smashed into my skull,
I feel costumed into noble
clothes like I should sport
a carnival mask.
I peer out the window;
the gondola he arrives in
nearly capsizes
when the rotund man exits it.
“Giovanna, come see,” I say,
and then remember
she refuses to talk to me.
I clutch the wall as I descend
the stairs so I do not topple
in these tall shoes.
I feel like I ate old fish,
know immediately
from his foul breath
that I cannot marry this man.
He coughs and squints
with an upturned nose.
“How old is she?”
Mother offers,
“Would you like to come in
and rest your feet, Signore Debratto?”
He stomps his cane.
“Her! How old is she?”
His face reddens from the exertion.
“I am fifteen, sir,” I say.
Mother bites her lip; apparently
I was not to speak.
But since I already spilled the tea,
I ask him, “How old are you?”
Signore Debratto huffs and grumbles.
“Well, I told your son I needed
a young wife,” he says to Mother.
He lifts his cane and raises my hair
to inspect behind my ears.
I hide behind my mother.
“Well, since she is so old,
I’ll expect a larger dowry.”
Signore Debratto wobbles in our doorway.
“I believe you may be right, sir.
Maria may be too mature for your tastes.”
Mother clasps my hand
and directs me upstairs
as our maid Carlotta
swiftly locks the door
Sisters of Glass Page 2
