Abundance, by Catherine Arra

Untitled, by Beverly Bennett (USA) 2025

Abundance
 
brought Nana & Papa from Grammichele, Sicily 
to steamer steerage in Naples, to the apron-filled 
bounty of America. Work was plenty
 
& they toiled in shipyards, factories, fields, on
subways, bridges & skyscrapers to build NYC
for the privilege of earning a wage, nesting
 
into a new culture, navigating new maps,
neighborhoods, a new language, a long-awaited
dawn after dearth & despair.
 
No one leaves the homeland but for survival,
a simple share. It was sacrifice, not a free ride,
faith not expectation. It was yearning.
 
Third generation, I became their first true footprint 
in America, a sprout from the handful of seeds they
carried from port to port.
 
I loved them, the duality of continents, countries, 
the commonality of desire in endless textures
& shades of skin.
 
Each school year I taught an Immigration unit
to my 11th-graders, took them on a field trip to
Ellis Island. Watched the awe of knowing &
seeing in kids, most whom would never leave their
towns, villages & farms. Read aloud the Emma Lazarus
poem at the feet of the Mother of Exiles:
 
Give me your tired, your poor …
No longer Irish or Italian, but the same refuse 
huddled in masses, foreign & homegrown.
 
Catherine Arra

Catherine Arra is a native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where she lives with wildlife and changing seasons until winter, when she migrates to the Space Coast of Florida. Arra teaches part-time and facilitates local writing groups. She is the author of four full-length collections and four chapbooks. Recent work appears in Unleash Lit, Eclectica Magazine, LitBreak Magazine, Poem Alone, and The Ekphrastic Review. Find her at www.catherinearra.com
 
Beverly Bennett, a lifelong Hudson Valley, New York resident,  is a visual artist who discovered her love for the bold, expressive qualities of printmaking early in life.  Formally a high school Art teacher with more than twenty five years experience teaching studio classes, she holds degrees in Graphic Arts, Advertising and Printmaking. Beverly’s focus, since her retirement from teaching in 2019, has predominantly been on further developing her artistic style while exhibiting in member and juried shows. Currently, she is researching her family's long history in New York and actively experimenting with printmaking and painting methods as a means to express her connection to that family.